Theoretical and experimental studies on thermal control by using a novel PTC material with room temperature Curie point

Positive temperature coefficient (PTC) material is a kind of thermo-sensitive material, the resistivity rapidly rises suddenly while the temperature increasing thereafter the Curie point. It can be used as a potential thermal control component to replace the ordinary resistor heater. However, the Curie temperatures of the most PTC materials are much higher than the operating temperature ranges of electronic devices. In this study, a new kind of PTC material with room temperature Curie point was prepared for the thermal control of electronic devices and its thermal control performances were investigated experimentally and theoretically. The results show that using the novel PTC material as a heating element can achieve higher temperature control accuracy than ordinary resistor heater in switch control method. The temperature control accuracy improves with the increase of set temperature and the highest accuracy is about 0.01 °C. In addition, compared with ordinary resistor, PTC material has the adaptive temperature control capacity without any control methods. Furthermore, the effect of adaptive temperature control depends on temperature coefficient of the PTC material, and the adaptive effect becomes better when the temperature coefficient is larger. This study provides a new method for the thermal control of electronic devices and specifies new directions for the future research work.