Abstract
Humidity calibration for a temperature-stable quartz oscillator (TSQO) was investigated to exclude the influences of relative humidity on the TSQO output in order to use the corresponding devices outdoors. The TSQO output is a voltage that is inversely proportional to the electric impedance of the quartz oscillator, which depends on the viscosity and density of the measured gas. The TSQO output was humidity calibrated using its humidity dependence, which was obtained by varying the relative humidity (RH) from 0 to 100 RH% while other conditions were kept constant. The humidity dependencies of the TSQO output were fit by a linear function. Subtracting the change in the TSQO output induced by the change in humidity, calculated with the function from the experimentally measured TSQO output for a range of 0-100RH%, eliminated the influence of humidity on the TSQO output. The humidity calibration succeeded in reducing the fluctuations of the TSQO output from 0.4-3% to 0.1-0.3% of the average values for a range of 0-100RH%, at constant temperatures. The necessary stability of the TSQO output for application in hydrogen sensors was below one-third of the change observed for a hydrogen leakage of 1 vol.% hydrogen concentration, corresponding to 0.33% of the change in each background. Therefore, the results in this study indicate that the present humidity calibration effectively suppresses the influence of humidity, for the TSQO output for use as an outdoor hydrogen sensor.