Quartz Capsule Pressure Transducer for the Automotive Industry

This paper describes a low-cost, high-performance manifold absolute pressure sensor for the automotive industry. The sensor uses a pressure-dependent sealed capacitor element constructed from fused quartz plates, and circuit detection schemes to produce the voltage signal output. Temperature effects due to the thermal elastic and linear expansion coefficients of the quartz capsule are also discussed, as are electronic compensation methods to minimize these effects in the output.