Large-Signal Simulation Model for PTC Thermistor

Timo Veijola
Abstract
A compact electrothermal simulation model for a semiconductor thermistor with positive temperature coe cient (PTC) is presented. The model presented is phenomenological, but it is based on physical models published by Heywang (1961,1964), Mallick and Emtage (1968), and Zhang and Cao (1996). With this dynamic, non-linear electricalequivalent circuit model, combined electrical and thermal behaviour of PTCs can be analyzed in the frequency and time domains with a circuit simulation program. The model has been veri ed by tting its response to several resistance-temperature and current-voltage data-sheet characteristics. A typical maximum relative resistance error at temperatures -25 C . . . 150 C is about 15 %. where the I-V characteristics di er considerably from Heywang's original model. The electrical-equivalent circuit PTC model presented in 2] was based on the Heywang model and it needs a sub-circuit to solve the transcendental equation for the barrier potential. In this paper, a rather phenomenological new model is presented that combines the most important properties of the models published 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].

2 PROPERTIES OF PTC
It is well known that donor-doped barium titanate (BaTiO3) ceramics cintred in air exhibit an anomalous increase of resistivity at the Curie temperature TS. Several authors have studied the temperature dependency of the barium titanate based PTC thermistors 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8] and veri ed that the increase of the resistance is due to the change in the dielectric constant in the boundary region between BaTiO3 grains. At low temperatures, the resistance of the PTC is low, dominated by the grain resistivity V , and it is slightly decreasing versus temperature. Above the Curie temperature TS, the resistivity S in the grain-boundary region will rapidly increase the PTC resistance by several decades. See Fig. 2 for typical resistance-temperature (R-T) characteristics.

1 INTRODUCTION
Semiconductor thermistors with negative (NTC) and positive (PTC) temperature coe cients are used in electrical devices for current limiting, temperature measurement and control purposes. When designing such devices, the thermistor can in many cases be treated as a constant, static resistor, whose resistance varies with temperature. However, when the power dissipation in the thermistor raises the device temperature considerably, a more complicated, non-linear, dynamic model must be applied to yield accurate simulation results. This electrothermal behaviour (self-heating) can be implemented with electrothermal component models 1] in a circuit simulation program. The temperature dependency of an NTC thermistor can be represented by a simple exponential expression, whereas the response of a PTC thermistor to temperature and voltage is more complicated, as was shown in 2]. The best-known model for PTC behaviour was given in the 1960's by Heywang 3, 4]; it has since been improved by several authors. The non-linear current-voltage (I-V) characteristic has been modelled and measured by Mallick and Emtage 5] and Al-Allak et. al 6]. Recently, Zhang and Cao 7] have published a model

2.1 Heywang Model

In the Heywang model 3, 4], the resistivity S above the Curie temperature depends exponentially on the potential barrier 0 in the grain-boundary region e 0 (1) S exp kT ; where e is the electron charge, k is the Boltzmann constant and T is the temperature. The potential barrier for small-voltage conditions is 3, 4]
0 (T ) =

en2 S 8 0 gb (T )ND ;

(2)

timo@aplac.hut.fi

Helsinki University of Technology, Department of Elec- grain boundaries, ND is the charge carrier concentrical and Communications Engineering, Circuit Theory tration, 0 is the permittivity in free space, and Laboratory, P.O.Box 3000, FIN-02015 HUT, Finland. Phone: +358-9-4512293, Fax: +358-9-4514818, E-mail: gb(T ) is the relative permittivity of the grain-

where nS is the number of trapped electrons at the

boundary region. Above TS , it obeys the Curie-

Weiss law

C (3) gb (T ) = T ? T ; S where TS is the Curie point and C is the Curie constant 1:2 105. The potential barrier 0 cannot be directly solved from Eq. (2) since the density nS is

3 MODEL IMPLEMENTATION
The PTC model presented here is an electrothermal circuit simulation model including the in uence of self-heating on its characteristics. In electrothermal models, the temperature rise above the ambient temperature TA equals an equivalent voltage u . The device temperature is, then, T = TA +u . Electrothermal component models consist of three separate blocks: electrical component model, heat ow model and thermal feedback 1]. The thermal network implements the function u = Z i , where Z is the thermal impedance of the device. 9] presents a method to synthesize thermal impedances as simple equivalent circuits.

a function of temperature and potential barrier 3]. The resulting transcendental equation was solved in 2] by the circuit simulator with the aid of an additional sub-circuit. To be able to construct a compact model, the contribution of nS mest be rst studied. In practice, it turns out that nS is constant at small barrier potentials and that it will e ectively limit the resistance only at high temperatures. In this new model, nS is assumed constant and the high temperature 3.1 Grain-Boundary Resistance behaviour is included in the relative permittivity The current function for the grain-boundary resisgb (T ). A new approximation for gb (T ) is tance is built from two separate parts: a tempera1 = 1 + 1 1 + tanh (T ? TS ) : (4) ture and a voltage dependent part. Since all other c coe cients except gb(T ) in Eq. (2) are constants, gb (T ) max 2 they can be included in a single parameter a, resultAt small temperatures, the relative permittivity is ing in 0 a= gb(T ). The exponential temperature limited to max; at high temperatures it is approx- dependency is then imately 1 ( max 1). In Eq. (4), TS is a switch Tnom f (u ): (7) 1 exp ? a temperature at the deepest resistance slope. iS = R S (T ) T

2.2 I-V Characteristics

The exponent controls the slope of the resistance at high temperatures: = 1 gives a decreasing slope whereas = 0 gives a constant resistance at high temperatures. The function f (uS) is the nonlinear, voltage-dependent part. For small voltages, f (uS) = uS; for large voltages, it is constructed uti" lizing Eq. (6). The voltage U of a single interface is 2# eU 0 ; (5) replaced with U = muS and the rst term in Eq. (6) i U exp kT 1 ? 4 0 is replaced with the tanh() function to implement the reversibility of uS . The function f (uS ) is where U is the voltage of a single grain interface. ! p Mallick and Emtage 5] also investigated the Ie j nu j emu kT S S : (8) V characteristics of BaTiO2 ceramics. They con- f (uS) = em tanh kT exp kT sidered di usion a process for current transport instead of the thermonic emission. The expression for 3.2 Grain Resistance the current is a complicated function of the barrier gain resistance is modelled with an NTC therpotential and temperature, but it contains basically The mistor. Its temperature dependency can be written the same square terms of voltage as in Eq. (5). as 10] According to Zhang and Cao 7], the Heywang uV exp iV = R (9) potential-barrier model is oversimpli ed. They use, Tnom ? T ; V instead, an image potential that greatly in uences the shape of the potential barrier. Their current- where RV is the resistance at the nominal temperature Tnom, and is a material constant. voltage dependency is When the applied voltage is relatively low, the PTC can be modelled with a linear temperaturedependent I-V characteristic i uS = S. According to Heywang's 4] original model, the I-V characteristic is

gb

eU exp e A + BU ; (6) 1 ? exp ? kT kT The capacitance CS of the grain-boundary region is proportional to the relative permittivity gb(T ) 8] where A and B are temperature dependent conCS = C0 gb (T ); (10) stants. i

3.3 Capacitances

where C0 is the nominal capacitance at gb (T ) = 1. Eq. (10) is implemented with a charge source controlled by voltages uS and u . The grain capacitance can be modelled with a constant capacitor CV 8]. The total resistivity of a PTC thermistor is the sum of grain resistivity and resistivity in the grainboundary region. Figure 1 shows an equivalent circuit model of the PTC thermistor. The grain resistor RV is implemented with an NTC thermistor, Eq. (9) and the grain-boundary resistor RS obeys the temperature- and voltage characteristics given by Eq. (7). The model also contains grain and barrier layer capacitances, CV and CS , respectively.
iS nJ uS CS RS nP

3.4 PTC Macro Model

Param. Symb. Description R0 R0 Nominal resistance ] TS TS Switch temperature K] ER max Maximum value of gb (T ) C c Resistance slope K] A a Scaling coe cient ETA Temperature exponent M m Non-linearity coe cient V?1 ] N n Non-linearity coe cient V?1 ] RV RV Grain resistance (NTC) ] B B-value of RV K] C0 C0 Nominal capacitance of CS F] CV CV Grain capacitance F] RTH R Thermal resistance K/W] CTH C Thermal capacitance TEMP TA Ambient temperature K] Table 1: PTC model parameters and their symbols. The maximum deviation of the model resistance is 15 % at temperatures ?25 C< T < 150 C.
1M
APLAC 7.50 User: HUT Circuit Theory Lab. Thu May 27 1999 R/ohm

nJ uV CV iV RV nP C R u

Philips 2322 660 Series 91001 91006 91007 91008 91009

100k

10k

RV and capacitance CV , grain-boundary resistance RS and capacitance CS . A simple thermal circuit

is shown.

Figure 1: PTC model consisting of grain resistance

1k

100

3.5 Model Parameters

-25 0 25 50 75 100 125 150 The model parameters are summarized in Table 1. Simple thermal model parameters are also shown Temp/C in the Table. The extracted parameters for one of the devices used in the model veri cation (Philips Figure 2: PTC resistance versus temperature. Resistance values from data book (2) and simulated 2322 660 91008) are model response (||).

10

MODEL + R0= + A= + RV= + N=

PTC66091008 USER_MODEL 11.32 ER= 29030 11.85 C= 28.07 34.60 B= 525.6 0.000815 RTH= 164.7

TS= 372.5 ETA= 0.307 M = 0.010

4.2 I-V Characteristics

PTC model parameters have been extracted by tting the model to curves in a thermistor data book 10]. Figure 2 shows the small-signal resistance versus temperature for a family of PTC thermistors together with the tted model response.

4 MODEL VERIFICATION 4.1 R-T Characteristics

Figure 3 depicts simulated constant-temperature IV characteristics. The agreement with the pulsed measurements presented, e.g., in 5], is reasonably good. In practice, PTC current-voltage characteristics are in uenced by temperature dependency through self-heating and the voltage dependency of the resistance. This is illustrated in Fig. 4, where the measured and simulated I-V characteristics are shown at two ambient temperatures. The simulated device temperature is also shown in Fig. 4.

APLAC 7.50 User: HUT Circuit Theory Lab. Thu May 27 1999

10
I/A

References
1] T. Veijola and M. Valtonen, \An objectoriented approach to combined electrical and thermal circuit simulation," in Proceedings of the 12th European Conference on Circuit Theory and Design, (Istanbul), pp. 1055{1058, 1995. http://www.aplac.hut. /publications. 2] T. Veijola, \Electrothermal simulation models for NTC and PTC thermistors," in Proceedings of the 2nd IMAS International Conference on: Circuits, Systems and Computers, IMACS-CSC'98, (Piraeus), pp. 950{955, Oct. 1998. http://www.aplac.hut. /publications. 3] W. Heywang, \Bariumtitanat als Sperrschichthalbleiter," Solid-State Electronics, vol. 3, pp. 51{58, 1961. 4] W. Heywang, \Resistivity anomaly in doped barium titanate," Journal of the American Ceramic Society, vol. 47, pp. 484{490, 1964. 5] G. T. Mallick Jr. and P. R. Emtage, \Currentvoltage characteristics of semiconducting barium titanate ceramic," Journal of Applied Physics, vol. 39, pp. 3088{3094, 1968. 6] H. M. Al-Allak, J. Illingsworth, A. W. Brinkman, and J. Woods, \Current-voltage characteristics of donor-doped BaTiO3 semiconducting ceramics," Journal of Physics D, vol. 22, pp. 1393{1397, Sept. 1989. 7] F. Zhang and Z. Cao, \A modi ed model in positive temperature coe cient of resistance BaTiO3 ceramics," Journal of Applied Physics, vol. 79, no. 5, pp. 2487{2490, 1996. 8] D. C. Sinclair and A. R. West, \Impedance and modulus spectroscopy of semiconducting BaTiO3 showing positive temperature coe cient of resistance," Journal of Applied Physics, vol. 66, pp. 3850{3856, Oct. 1989. 9] T. Veijola, \Simple model for thermal spreading impedance," in Proceedings of Baltic Electronics Conference BEC'96, (Tallinn), pp. 73{76, Oct. 1996. http://www.aplac.hut. /publications. 10] Philips Data Handbook, Varistors, Thermistors and Sensors, Book PA02, Mar. 1989. 11] M. Valtonen et al., APLAC. Helsinki University of Technology and Nokia Research Center, 7.1 Reference Manual and 7.1 User's Manual, Otaniemi, Oct. 1997. http://www.aplac.hut. /aplac.

Philips 2322 660 91008

1

0.1 10m 1m

TA = 50 C

TA = 150 C
100 10 0.1 1.0 10.0
U/V

100.0

1.0k

Figure 3: Simulated constant-temperature I-V characteristics at TA = 50, 75, 100, 125, and 150 C.
100
APLAC 7.50 User: HUT Circuit Theory Lab. Thu May 27 1999

200
T/C

Philips 2322 660 91008

I/mA

TA = 25C
30

150

TA = 55C

100

10

50

0 1 3 10
U/V

30

100

Figure 4: PTC current-voltage characteristics. Current values from data book (2) and simulated current (||) and temperature (| | |).

5 CONCLUSIONS
A novel electrothermal circuit simulation model for a PTC thermistor was presented. The resulting model is simpler than the one published 2], but it is still able to reproduce the R-T and I-V characteristics with a good accuracy. However, additional large-signal measurements at various temperatures should be performed to verify the non-linear model. A capacitance model for PTC thermistor is also given, but has not been veri ed due to the lack of frequency response measurements. The electrothermal modelling capabilities of the circuit simulation program APLAC 11] were utilized in the model's development and its optimization methods were used in the parameter tting. The model has been written in APLACs modelling language.