Humidity Sensor Using an Air Capacitor

We studied the possibility that an air capacitor can be used as a humidity sensor by measuring capacitance change. In order to investigate the possibility, the change of capacitance of an air capacitor due to moisture in air was first considered theoretically, and was then experimentally verified. The capacitance was measured by an LCR impedance meter with a 100-kHz and 1-V ac. The results revealed that the changes in the experimentally measured capacitances were greater than those in the theoretically calculated values. Based on this fact, we knew that an air capacitor could be used as part of a humidity sensing device. We expect the humidity sensor with an air capacitor has characteristics of fast response time, high reliability, and high durability compared with other conventional methods.