Absolute Capacitance Manometers

The present invention relates to improvements in capacitance-related measurement of fluid pressures, and, in one particular aspect, to unique high-performance absolute-pressure transducers in which widely-different ranges of pressures, such as those near vacuum and at or near atmospheric levels, are advantageously characterized by a single assembly of economical and uncomplicated construction wherein a main diaphragm functions distinctively both as a movable capacitance electrode over one of the ranges and as a means for mechanically inducing variations in a further capacitance array over another range.

It has become common practice to sense and provide related measurements of pressure, and especially very low levels of pressure, in terms of the capacitances exhibited between a pair of closely-spaced electrodes, one of which is adjusted in position relative to the other in accordance with differences in pressures acting upon an associated diaphragm. In the case of so-called "absolute" pressure capacitance manometers, one of the pressures, which is maintained as a reference, is substantially gasless and usually as close to a perfect vacuum as it is feasible and practical to establish and hold on one side of the diaphragm. However, if any such device is to be counted upon to sense and usefully characterize pressures which are very small, its design features, including a relatively close electrode spacing, tend to render it unsuitable for dependable indications of the much larger pressures appearing at or near ambient atmospheric levels. Yet, reliable knowledge about such ambient pressures is commonly quite important to the user, who, among other things, must be able to determine when once-evacuated sensitive systems, monitored precisely while at low pressures, are being brought back up to or near atmospheric levels at which system openings and "dumping" may be ventured safely. It is for such reasons that auxiliary thermocouple-type gages have been used to furnish system operators with at least coarse information about pressures near atmospheric, and that the highly-sensitive capacitance manometers have come to be used in tandem with similarly-constructed manometers designed to function at higher atmospheric-level pressures. The latter expedients involve costs, bulk and complexities which it would of course be advantageous to avoid.

The present teachings provide for capacitance-related characterizations of pressures over widely-disparate ranges. by way of but a single uncomplicated transducer. In a preferred physical expression of such a transducer, a planar sheet-metal diaphragm is interposed in a generally-conventional sealed mounting between an evacuated reference chamber and a port communicating with a site of pressures to be measured. That diaphragm itself serves as a capacitor electrode, and, in a routine fashion, is movably positionable relative to a further cooperating nearby relatively-stationary capacitor electrode located in the evacuated reference chamber, responsive to changes in the measured pressures. However, the relatively-stationary further capacitor electrode is in this instance an element of a unique composite structure wherein its insulating suppot comprises a flexible ceramic disc peripherally united with a rigid ceramic body carrying a still further capacitor electrode in closely-spaced relation to the disc. That composite structure, which is preferably in the form of a substantially monolithic ceramic capsule having the electrodes plated onto certain of its surfaces, lies wholly within the reference chamber and its flexible disc is not subjected to pressure differentials which might cause it to deflect and thereby vary capacitance between its electrodes; nevertheless, such disc deflections, and attendant variations in the capsule's capacitance, do occur, but, quite differently, as the result of wholly mechanical action of the metal diaphragm pressing against the disc. When some measured system pressures are in a very low range, such as 0-10 Torr, the transducer capacitance is mainly that exhibited betweem the metal diaphragm and disc electrode, but, when the system pressure approaches much higher atmospheric levels, the metal diaphragm will have responded by pressing against the flexible disc and forcing it to reduce the spacing between the capsule electrodes, so that their exhibited capacitance increases. The combined capacitances may thus distinctively characterize sensed pressure, from near zero to ambient in the one transducer.

Accordingly, it is one of the objects of this invention to promote unique and advantageous capacitance-manometer measurements across wide ranges of sensed pressures utilizing a single small multi-electrode assembly of simple low-cost construction in which there are two different types of responses to the pressures.

A further object is to provide a novel and improved absolute-pressure transducer which is alone capable of characterizing both a low sensitive range of pressures and the very much higher pressures near and at ambient atmospheric levels.

Still further, it is an object to reduce the complexity and difficulty of performing absolute-pressure measurements spanning widely different ranges, by way of a diaphragm-type transducer which uniquely cooperates with an electrode capsule in two ways, one involving the diaphragm acting wholly as a capacitor electrode and the other involving the diaphragm as a force-applying member which mechanically alters other capacitance appearing from within the capsule.

Although the aspects of this invention which are considered to be novel are expressed in the appended claims, further details as to preferred practices and as to further objects and features thereof may be most readily comprehended through reference to the following detailed description when taken in connection with the accompanying drawings, wherein:

FIG. 1 is a side elevational view illustrating principal components of an improved absolute capacitance manometer in an "exploded" relationship along a central longitudinal axis, certain of the parts being cross-sectioned to further reveal details of construction;

FIG. 2 shows a prior form of single-electrode carrier known in earlier pressure transducers, the exterior proportions of which carrier can be advantageously matched by a multiple-diaphragm multiple-electrode capsule unit in the improved absolute capacitance manometer;

FIG. 3 represents in graphical form, and on two scales, the capacitance vs. pressure characteristics of an improved manometer constructed in accordance with the present teachings;

FIG. 4A is a side elevational view, partly in cross section, of two unassembled parts of a ceramic capsule unit for the improved manometer, in association with a portion of a metal diaphragm;

FIG. 4B provides a top plan view of the rigid upper-electrode portion of the capsule unit of FIG. 4A;

FIG. 4C supplies a bottom plan view of the same upper-electrode portion;

FIG. 5A is a top plan view of the thin and flexible diaphragm-type disc electrode portion of the capsule unit of FIG. 4A; and

FIG. 5B is a bottom plan view of the same disc electrode portion of the capsule unit.

Having reference to the drawings, wherein like numbers and characters designate identical or corresponding parts or features throughout the several views, and more particularly to FIG. 1 thereof, there are illustrated the various components which will, together, make up an improved absolute capacitance-type pressure sensor or cell, 6, in which the measurement range of the one unit extends from a sensitive low region of special interest near vacuum up to and including relatively high atmospheric pressures. In general form and size, the exterior, and much of the interior, of the assembly is advantageously virtually identical to what is found in a known prior capacitance manometer which serves but one limited range, and that is true, for example, of its joined (welded or otherwise bonded) metal main body parts 7 and 8, the thin planar sheet-metal diaphragm 9 held between and sealed with those body parts, the sealed fitting or pipe 10 through which one side of the diaphragm is fluid-coupled to some plenum and is thus exposed to site pressures which are to be characterized by the sensor, and a top metal cover 11 which is permanently joined to and sealed with the intermediate body part 7 and mounts the usual sealed off evacuation tube 12, getter provision 13 and insulated electrical lead-through pin 14 associated with a low-force electrode-contacting spring 14A. The latter spring depends from what is the inner (lower) side of the cover, where it is disposed to lie within and connect with a capacitance electrode in an evacuated sealed chamber maintaining a near-vacuum reference-pressure condition on the upper side of the diaphragm 9.

An assembly of components such as those described next above has been and continues to be successfully used in association with a monolithic inner electrode structure like that of FIG. 2, where a shouldered disk-like solid ceramic insulating element 15 carries a plated metallic electrode layer 16 on its planar lower face, in spaced confronting relation to the upper planar surface of the nearby circular sheet-metal diaphragm 9' (corresponding to the aforementioned diaphragm 9). The diaphragm and coated metallic layer above it form electrodes of a capacitor whose exhibited capacitance at any time varies as a function of sensed pressure acting on the bottom of the diaphragm while a reference (near-vacuum) pressure acts on its opposite top surface; as the edge-restrained sealed diaphragm bows upwardly to greater extents with increased sensed pressures, its spacings from fixed electrode "plate" 16 diminish and thereby cause the capacitor to exhibit higher values of electrical capacitance which conventional auxiliary electronic circuitry then translates into displays characterizing those sensed pressures. Physical spacings are of course highly critical, inasmuch as their uncontrolled variations will occasion error, and precise dimensioning and mounting of shouldered ceramic element 15 in a body part such as 7 are therefore correspondingly critical. Accordingly, both the shoulder 15A and other portions of element 15 and the mating inner shoulder 7A and other dimensionally-correlated portions of the sensor body are fashioned with the closest practical tolerances. Taking advantage of established high-precision physical parameters already appearing in the design of the body and diaphragm structure for such a sensor, improvements offered by the present teachings are very beneficially expressed via a capsule-like composite electrode structure, 17, which on the outside looks much the same as the prior item 15 and which has a like shoulder 17A and is otherwise conveniently so identical in certain dimensions as to be substituted for it in a line of assembly of transducers covering various ranges.

However, not only is electrode structure 17 distinctively different in respect of its composite construction, but its mode of cooperative functioning, mechanically and electrically, with the usual sensor diaphragm, 9, is unique as well. Specifically, composite electrode structure 17 forms a shallow generally-cylindrical capsule in which there is a separate internal variable capacitor whose two spaced planar capacitor electrodes 18 and 19A appear as thin metallic films respectively on the bottom recessed surface 17B of the rigid ceramic capsule member 17C and on the top of a relatively thin and elastically deformable ceramic disc-like capsule member 19(FIG. 4A). The capsule parts supporting those two capacitor electrodes are always exposed to the same near-vacuum reference pressure, because sealed diaphram 9 isolates them from pressures appearing at measurement sites, and because pressure within the inner cavity 20 formed between the rigid upper capsule member 17C and the securely-attached disc-like lower capsule member 19 is the same as the reference pressure, as will always be equalized via the capsule holes 17D and 19B. Therefore, although the capsule elastic disc 19 has the thin flat configuration of a pressure-responsive diaphragm, it does not behave in an expected way, inasmuch as it experiences no pressure differentials; instead, it is a member actuated by mechanically-applied force and may be deflected closer to the electrode 18 when the nearby elastic diaphragm 9 is sufficiently distended by sensed pressures below it to engage it and physically move it in an upward direction referenced to the central longitudinal axis 21--21 of the transducer (FIG. 1).

As the pressure appearing at a measurement site, and appearing also at inlet 10, change between an extremely low pressure near 0 Torr and some higher value, such as About 10 Torr, in a low measurement range of special interest, the capacitance exhibited between electrode surfaces offered by sheet-metal diaphragm 9 and electrode surfaces formed by the nearby metallic bottom electrode film 19C on disc 19, the transducer output capacitance varies rather uniformly about as shown by dashed-line curve 22 in FIG. 3 (in picofarads). That output capacitance represents a combination (summation) primarily of a first capacitance between electrode surfaces offered by diaphragm 9 and film electrode surface 19C, which over that low range tends to be a relatively large varying quantity, and the further capacitance between the electrode surfaces formed by the capsule's film electrodes 19A and 18, which over that same low range tends to remain substantially fixed and not so great as to mask the variations exhibited by the first capacitance. When some relatively low upper end of the low measurement range of special interest is reached, built-in physical parameters of the described transducer insure that the top central part of circular diaphragm 9 will first physically engage the bottom central part of the capsule structure 17 and will thereafter flex its disc 19 upwardly closer toward electrode 18 as pressures increase still further. Ultimately, when atmospheric pressure is reached, the flexible disc will have been pressed upwardly to substantially a maximum needed extent by the diaphragm, and the reduced space then appearing between its upper electrode film 19A and the fixed electrode 18 will result in a maximum combined output capacitance being displayed by the transducer. On another and broader scale, in FIG. 3, curve 23 characterizes the transducer output capacitance, which rises sharply over the low measurement range of interest, as shown along curve expanse 23A, and more slowly over the upper range which rises to and through atmospheric pressure (about 760 Torr), as shown along curve expanse 23B. The "knee" region 23C represents the transition when sheet-metal diaphragm 9 engages and starts to bottom-out against the capsule 17.

Such bottoming-out tends to be somewhat critical because interfacing engagements and disengagements of the metal diaphragm and capsule can involve undesirable "hysteresis" (i.e., are not always precisely the same for the same pressure changes); unavoidable roughness of the engaged capsule surfaces contributes to that problem, and improvement is realized when the area of contact is intentionally kept small, rather than being allowed to spread over most of the exposed bottom surface of the capsule. That small area of contacting also develops a preferred deflection characteristic for the disc 19, and a convenient way of promoting the desired effects is by fashioning a shallow but nevertheless protruding "button" 19D at the bottom of the capsule disc. Flexible insulating disc 19 is preferably of ceramic material, such as alumina, having known usefulness in prior capacitance-manometer structures, and the same is true of the cooperating shouldered rigid capsule part 17 with which it is integrally united about its periphery. The materials and bonding techniques involved with such ceramics are well established in the art and are therefore not elaborated upon here; the same is true also of the formation of the metallic film-thickness electrodes which appear on their various surfaces. The aforementioned flat insulating "button" or protrusion 19D may comprise a separate thin circular ceramic or glass member bonded to underside of disc 19, or, as illustrated, it may be in the form of a fired-glass glaze coating 19F. Preferably, the central circular electrode coatings 19A and 19C on disc 19 are about the same size and are relatively small in relation to the overall disc diameter, such as about one-third, or typically about one-half inch in diameter relative to an effective disc diameter of about one-and-one-half inches; the desirably smooth glaze coating 19E of the "button" 19D just overlies the lower electrode film 19C (FIG. 5B). The small (typically 1/16 inch) center hole 19B through disc 19 allows for the metallic film coatings forming upper electrode surfaces 19A and lower electrode surfaces 19C to be electrically joined by a like and simultaneously-deposited metallic film which extends through that hole. Many of the advantages of the improved transducer may be realized if only top electrode surfaces such as 19A are used, because a ceramic disc 19 of alumina has a very high dielectric constant (about 9.5, vs. 1 for a vacuum) and thus acts as though it were only about 1/10th its actual small thickness of about only 0.045 inch. However, it currently appears to be a better practice to have the lower electrode surfaces 19C in place to form the main sensitive-range capacitance with electrode surfaces of the metal diaphragm 9; the glaze 19E of course prevents any electrical shorting of that diaphragm with electrode surfaces 19C when they engage and the diaphragm bottoms out while forcing flexible disc upwardly under higher-pressure measurement conditions.

The electrode surfaces formed by sheet-metal diaphragm 9 are electrically as well as physically joined with the transducer metal housing or body parts 7 and 8, as by peripheral welding, and they are also caused to have good electrical connection with the upper inner capsule electrode 18, by way of a plated metallic ring 17E (FIG. 4B) around the upper peripheral surface of the rigid ceramic shoulder 17A. That ring is joined with electrode surfaces 18 by a plate-through 17F traversing the hole 17D in capsule membr 17, and it finds electrical connection with the transducer body, along with diaphragm 9, through conductive paths such as those provided by the overlying solid spacer-washer 24 and springy metal wovewasher 25, both interposed between shoulder ring 17E and the metallic cover 11 (FIG. 1) which is welded to body part 7 when the transducer assembly is about to be completed. Both the diaphragm 9 and the rigidly-positioned electrode 18 form the aforementioned important variable-capacitance relationships with the joined disc electrodes 19C and 19A, respectively, and it is of course necessary that there be a secure and separate electrical connection with those joined electrodes; internal conductive spring 14A, associated with the externally-accessible output lead 14, supplies such as connection by engaging and making good contact with a plated conductive radial tab 19F (FIG. 5A) which is integral with and simultaneously deposited with the disc electrode 19A (and 19C). For that purpose, contact spring 14A must reach tab 19F through capsule member 17 without connecting with any of the metallic plating associated with its electrode 18 and connection ring 17 and plate-through 17F, and it does so by passing freely through the relatively large accommodating hole 17D and pressing firmly against tab 19F.

Upper electrode 18, on the inside of capsule 17, is of substantially the same configuration and size as the cooperating parallel lower inner capsule electrode 19A, and the normal spacing between them, when the disc element 19 is undeflected, is typically only very small, such as about the order of a few thousandths (example: 0.008 inch). That spacing is determined essentially by the depth of the capsule cavity 20, the film electrodes themselves being exceedingly thin. An even closer normal spacing between the undeflected diaphragm 9 and the capsule electrode surfaces 19C above it is preserved by appropriate dimensions affecting confronting external surfaces of the capsule and internal shoulder surfaces of the transducer body 7, aided as may be necessary by an auxiliary washer-like shim 26 (FIG. 1).

In other constructions, the plated film-like electrodes may instead involve thicker and/or specifically-different conductive regions of material, and the capsule may incorporate a sheet-metal diaphragm-type member rather than a ceramic disc. Flexible lead wire may be employed in place of the illustrated contact spring, and an accommodating opening for its passage into the interior of the capsule may be separate from the plated lead-through. Separate leads may bring out the two variable capacitances independently, where appropriate. A fluid fill, such as one of silicone, may be employed to promote good deflection of the capsule disc by the main diaphragm. Further, the same principles and features of construction may be applied in capacitive pressure sensors other than those of the absolute type. Accordingly, it should be understood that the specific embodiments and practices described in connection with this specification have been presented by way of disclosure rather than limitation and that various modifications, combinations and substitutions may be effected by those skilled in the art without departure either in spirit or scope from this invention in its broader aspects and as set forth in the appended claims.