ABSTRACT
Developments in manufacturing and production technologies have permitted the introduction of a variety of solid state sensors and transducers. Integrated single chip devices incorporating amplification, stabilization and temperature compensation circuitry are currently in use for a range of applications including rotor position sensing in permanent magnet motors, displacement transducers and compasses. Magnetoresistive transducers are capable of detecting lower fields than Hall Effect devices, and this has led to their use in reading heads for magnetic storage mediums. Magnetodiodes with sensitivities greater than that of Hall Effect devices but with reduced linearity can be produced using silicon on sapphire technology. Thermistors are low cost devices and their small size means that they have a relatively low thermal inertia, enabling them to respond to changes in temperature. The piezoresistive effect in semiconductor materials has been utilized to develop silicon strain gauges with gauge factors of the order of 200.
