Dresden 2017 – scientific programme

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VA: Fachverband Vakuumphysik und Vakuumtechnik

VA 4: Poster Session

VA 4.5: Poster

Monday, March 20, 2017, 14:45–16:00, P2-OG3

A Passive Wide Range Gauge — •Jaroslaw Iwicki, Detlev Tietjen, Ruben Gerhardt, Michael Flaemmich, and Ute Bergner — VACOM Vakuum Komponenten & Messtechnik GmbH, Jena, Deutschland

The Pirani gauge, named after its inventor Marcello Stefano Pirani, has become one of the workhorses in vacuum technology and corresponding industries. As a stand-alone gauge, this thermal conductance based principle is widely used in industrial environments for moderate pressure determination. Despite existing needs for such a measuring tool equipped with versatility, accuracy, robustness and low cost, however, in UHV applications the Pirani gauge is rarely used. Primarily this is due to its bake-out restrictions attributed to the location of the signal processing electronics. Latter is to be installed directly onto the gauge, so that bakeable Pirani gauges are hardly or not available. Moreover, bakeable wide range gauges - consisting of a Pirani and a hot or cold cathode - do not exist. In this talk we introduce a novel Pirani gauge setup in which the gauge signal processing is realized by a microcontroller driven digital processing unit. In contrast to the conventional analogue based setup of signal processing (Wheatstone Bridge), the electronics can be spacially separated from the vacuum gauge. Decent theoretical data and experimental results will be presented to explore and support the features of the novel Pirani gauge concept. Finally, the digital setup allows integrating the Pirani sensor in a wide range gauge in a way that boundaries between transducers and passive gauges may disappear in the future.