Fast response thermopiles

Abstract

Since the introduction of the thermoelectric transductor in the measurement of solar radiation by Crova in 1890, two features, the sensitivity and characteristic time, represent constant parameters of a thermopile.In this paper, an instrument is described with continuously varying sensitivity and time constant (TC), capable of high resolution in time, in the environs of 25 milliseconds. It is also demonstrated that, if the sensitivity and TC are varying,they are mathematically related in a simple linear relationship.