The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Aug. 05, 1997
Filed:
Jun. 15, 1995
Michael Scherer, Rodenbach, DE;
Roland Werner, Hainburg, DE;
Leybold Aktiengesellschaft, Hanau, DE;
Abstract
In a moisture sensor (1), the effective sensor field (4) is formed by two sensor elements (8a, 8b,) having interdigitating parallel tracks. These sensor elements consist of layers of a metal nitride compound, especially a chromium-nitrogen compound, deposited by means of magnetron cathode sputtering or glow discharge onto a dielectric substrate (2), the metal nitride layers being deposited onto the substrate surface which has first been cleaned by ion sputtering. These sensor element layers (8a, 8b) have a high hardness of about 2,000 on the Vickers scale, as a result of which the sensor elements (8a, 8b) are highly resistant to abrasive wear such as that caused by windshield wipers or scratching from ice. The moisture sensor can be produced with a low electrical surface resistivity of <100 ohms.quadrature. and is chemically stable with respect to environmental effects such as salt water and/or windshield cleaning fluids. As a result, the proposed moisture sensor is especially suitable for use as a rain sensor on vehicles, the rain sensor preferably being mounted on a window of the vehicle.