Pt100 temperature sensor – useful things to know

　　The Pt100 temperature sensors are very common sensors in the process industry. This blog post discusses many useful and practical things to know about the Pt100 sensors. There's information on RTD and PRT sensors, different Pt100 mechanical structures, temperature-resistance relationship, temperature coefficients, accuracy classes and on many more.

　　A while back I wrote about thermocouples, so I was thinking it’s time to write about RTD temperature sensors, especially on the Pt100 sensor which is a very common temperature sensor in the process industry. This blog ended up being pretty long as there is a lot of useful information to share on Pt100 sensors. I hope you like it and that you learn something from it. So let’s get into it!

　　Table of contents

　　As this post became pretty long, here’s a table of contents to help you to see what's included:

　　RTD sensors

　　PRT sensors

　　PRT versus thermocouple

　　Measuring RTD/PRT sensor

　　Measurement current

　　Self-heating

　　Different mechanical structures of PRT sensors

　　SPRT

　　Partially supported PRT

　　Industrial Platinum Resistance Thermometers, IPRT’s

　　Film

　　Other RTD sensors

　　Other Platinum sensors

　　Other RTD sensors

　　Pt100 sensors

　　Temperature coefficient

　　Pt100 (385) temperature resistance relationship

　　Other Pt100 sensors with different temperature coefficients

　　Make sure your measurement device supports your Pt100 sensor

　　Pt100 accuracy (tolerance) classes

　　Coefficients

　　Callendar-van Dusen

　　ITS-90

　　Steinhart-Hart

　　Other "Temperature" related blog posts

　　Beamex temperature calibration products

　　For terminology, both “sensor” and “probe” words are generally used, I mainly use “sensor” in this article.

　　Also, people write "Pt100" and "Pt-100", I will mainly use the Pt100 format. (Yep, I know that IEC / DIN 60751 uses the Pt-100 format, but I am so used to the Pt100 format).