Potentiometer

This article is about the electrical component. For the measuring instrument, see Potentiometer (measuring instrument).

Potentiometer
A typical single-turn potentiometer
Type	Passive
Electronic symbol
(International) (US)

A potentiometer ( /pɵˌtɛnʃiˈɒmɨtər/), informally, a pot, in electronics technology is a component, a three-terminal resistor with a sliding contact that forms an adjustable voltage divider. If only two terminals are used, one end and the wiper, it acts as a variable resistor or rheostat.

In circuit theory and measurement a potentiometer is essentially a voltage divider used for measuring electric potential (voltage); the component is an implementation of the same principle, whence its name.

Potentiometers are commonly used to control electrical devices such as volume controls on audio equipment. Potentiometers operated by a mechanism can be used as position transducers, for example, in a joystick.

Potentiometers are rarely used to directly control significant power (more than a watt), since the power dissipated in the potentiometer would be comparable to the power in the controlled load (see infinite switch). Instead they are used to adjust the level of analog signals (e.g. volume controls on audio equipment), and as control inputs for electronic circuits. For example, a light dimmer uses a potentiometer to control the switching of a TRIAC and so indirectly to control the brightness of lamps.

Potentiometer construction

Potentiometers comprise a resistive element, a sliding contact (wiper) that moves along the element, making good electrical contact with one part of it, electrical terminals at each end of the element, a mechanism that moves the wiper from one end to the other, and a housing containing the element and wiper.

The resistive element of inexpensive potentiometers is often made of graphite. Other materials used include resistance wire, carbon particles in plastic, and a ceramic/metal mixture called cermet. Conductive track potentiometers use conductive polymer resistor pastes that contain hard-wearing resins and polymers, solvents, and lubricant, in addition to the carbon that provides the conductive properties. The tracks are made by screen-printing the paste onto a paper-based phenolic substrate and then curing it in an oven. The curing process removes all solvents and allows the conductive polymer to polymerize and cross-link. This produces a durable track with electrical resistance which is stable throughout its working life.^{[citation needed]}

Some potentiometers are designed to be operated by the user of equipment, and are fitted with a slider or rotating shaft which extends outside the housing of the equipment using it and is fitted with a knob; a familiar example is the volume control knob of analog audio equipment. Others are enclosed within the equipment and are intended to be adjusted to calibrate equipment during manufacture or repair, and not otherwise touched. They are usually physically much smaller than user-accessible potentiometers, and may need to be operated by a screwdriver rather than having a know. They are usually called "preset potentiometers". Some presets are accessible by a small screwdriver poked through a hole in the case to allow servicing without dismantling.

User-accessible rotary potentiometers can be fitted with a switch which operates usually at the anti-clockwise extreme of rotation. Before digital electronics became the norm such a component was used to allow radio and television receivers and other equipment to be switched on at minimum volume with an audible click, then the volume increased, by turning a knob.

Many inexpensive potentiometers are constructed with a resistive element formed into an arc of a circle usually a little less than a full turn, and rotating around the arc. The resistive element, with a terminal at both ends, is flat or angled. The wiper is connected through another sliding contact to another terminal. On panel potentiometers, the wiper is usually the center terminal of three. For single-turn potentiometers, this wiper typically travels just under one revolution around the contact. The only point of ingress for contamination is the narrow space between the shaft and the housing it rotates in.

Another type is the linear slider potentiometer, which has a wiper which slides along a linear element instead of rotating. Contamination can potentially enter anywhere along the slot the slider moves in, making effective sealing more difficult and compromising long-term reliability. An advantage of the slider potentiometer is that the slider position gives a visual indication of its setting. While the setting of a rotary potentiometer can be seen by the position of a marking on the knob, an array of sliders can give a visual impression of, for example, the effect of a multi-channel equaliser.

Multiturn potentiometers are also operated by rotating a shaft, but by several turns rather than less than a full turn. Some multiturn potentiometers have a linear resistive element with a slider which moves along it moved by a worm gear; others have a helical resistive element and a wiper that turns through 10, 20, or more complete revolutions, moving along the helix as it rotates. Multiturn potentiometers, both user-accessible and preset, allow finer adjustments; rotation through the same angle changes the setting by typically a tenth as much as for a simple rotary potentiometer.

A string potentiometer is a multi-turn potentiometer operated by an attached reel of wire turning against a spring, enabling it to convert linear position to a variable resistance.

PCB mount trimmer potentiometers, or "trimpots", intended for infrequent adjustment.

Resistance–position relationship: "taper"

The relationship between slider position and resistance, known as the "taper", is controlled by the manufacturer. In principle any relationship is possible, but for most purposes linear or logarithmic (aka "audio taper") potentiometers are sufficient. A letter code ("A" taper, "B" taper, etc.) may be used to identify which taper is used, but the letter code definitions are variable over time and between manufacturers.

Linear taper potentiometer

A linear taper potentiometer (linear describes the electrical characteristic of the device, not the geometry of the resistive element) has a resistive element of constant cross-section, resulting in a device where the resistance between the contact (wiper) and one end terminal is proportional to the distance between them. Linear taper potentiometers are used when the division ratio of the potentiometer must be proportional to the angle of shaft rotation (or slider position), for example, controls used for adjusting the centering of an analog cathode-ray oscilloscope.

Logarithmic potentiometer

A logarithmic taper potentiometer has a resistive element that either 'tapers' in from one end to the other, or is made from a material whose resistivity varies from one end to the other. This results in a device where output voltage is a logarithmic function of the slider position.

Most (cheaper) "log" potentiometers are not accurately logarithmic, but use two regions of different resistance (but constant resistivity) to approximate a logarithmic law. A logarithmic potentiometer can also be simulated (not very accurately) with a linear one and an external resistor. True logarithmic potentiometers are significantly more expensive.

Logarithmic taper potentiometers are often used in connection with audio amplifiers as human perception of audio volume is logarithmic.

A high power wirewound potentiometer. Any potentiometer may be connected as a rheostat.

Rheostat

See also: Liquid rheostat

The most common way to vary the resistance in a circuit is to use a rheostat, a two-terminal variable resistor. Rheostats are usually designed to handle much higher voltage, current and power than potentiometers. Typically they are constructed as a resistive wire wrapped to form a toroidal coil with the wiper moving over the upper surface of the toroid, sliding from one turn of the wire to the next. Sometimes a rheostat is made from resistance wire wound on a heat-resisting cylinder, with the slider made from a number of metal fingers that grip lightly onto a small portion of the turns of resistance wire. The "fingers" can be moved along the coil of resistance wire by a sliding knob thus changing the "tapping" point. They are usually used as variable resistors rather than variable potential dividers.

Any three-terminal potentiometer can be used as a two-terminal variable resistor by leaving one of the end terminals disconnected. However, it is common practice to connect the wiper terminal to the unused end of the resistance track to reduce the amount of resistance variation caused by dirt on the track.

Digital potentiometer

Main article: Digital potentiometer

A digital potentiometer is an electronic component that mimics the functions of analog potentiometers. Through digital input signals, the resistance between two terminals can be adjusted, just as in an analog potentiometer.

Membrane potentiometer

A membrane potentiometer uses a conductive membrane that is deformed by a sliding element to contact a resistor voltage divider. Linearity can range from 0.5% to 5% depending on the material, design and manufacturing process. The repeat accuracy is typically between 0.1mm and 1.0mm with a theoretically infinite resolution. The service life of these types of potentiometers is typically 1 million to 20 million cycles depending on the materials used during manufacturing and the actuation method; contact and contactless (magnetic) methods are available. Many different material variations are available such as PET(foil), FR4, and Kapton. Membrane potentiometer manufacturers offer linear, rotary, and application-specific variations. The linear versions can range from 9mm to 1000mm in length and the rotary versions range from 0° to multiple full turns, with each having a height of 0.5mm. Membrane potentiometers can be used for position sensing.

Potentiometer applications

Preset potentiometers are widely used throughout electronics wherever adjustments must be made during manufacturing or servicing.

User-actuated potentiometers are widely used as user controls, and may control a very wide variety of equipment functions. The widespread use of potentiometers in consumer electronics declined in the 1990s, with digital controls now more common. However they remain in many applications, such as volume controls and as position sensors.

Audio control

Linear potentiometers ("faders")

Low-power potentiometers, both linear and rotary, are used to control audio equipment, changing loudness, frequency attenuation and other characteristics of audio signals.

The 'log pot' is used as the volume control in audio amplifiers, where it is also called an "audio taper pot", because the amplitude response of the human ear is approximately logarithmic. It ensures that on a volume control marked 0 to 10, for example, a setting of 5 sounds subjectively half as loud as a setting of 10. There is also an anti-log pot or reverse audio taper which is simply the reverse of a logarithmic potentiometer. It is almost always used in a ganged configuration with a logarithmic potentiometer, for instance, in an audio balance control.

Potentiometers used in combination with filter networks act as tone controls or equalizers.

Television

Potentiometers were formerly used to control picture brightness, contrast, and color response. A potentiometer was often used to adjust "vertical hold", which affected the synchronization between the receiver's internal sweep circuit (sometimes a multivibrator) and the received picture signal, along with other things such as audio-video carrier offset, tuning frequency (for push-button sets) and so on.

Transducers

Potentiometers are also very widely used as a part of displacement transducers because of the simplicity of construction and because they can give a large output signal.

Computation

In analog computers, high precision potentiometers are used to scale intermediate results by desired constant factors, or to set initial conditions for a calculation. A motor-driven potentiometer may be used as a function generator, using a non-linear resistance card to supply approximations to trigonometric functions. For example, the shaft rotation might represent an angle, and the voltage division ratio can be made proportional to the cosine of the angle.

Theory of operation

A potentiometer with a resistive load, showing equivalent fixed resistors for clarity.

The potentiometer can be used as a voltage divider to obtain a manually adjustable output voltage at the slider (wiper) from a fixed input voltage applied across the two ends of the potentiometer. This is the most common use of them.

The voltage across R_L can be calculated by:

$V_\mathrm{L} = { R_2 R_\mathrm{L} \over R_1 R_\mathrm{L} + R_2 R_\mathrm{L} + R_1 R_2}\cdot V_s.$

If R_L is large compared to the other resistances (like the input to an operational amplifier), the output voltage can be approximated by the simpler equation:

$V_\mathrm{L} = { R_2 \over R_1 + R_2 }\cdot V_s.$

(dividing throughout by R_L and cancelling terms with R_L as denominator)

As an example, assume

$V_\mathrm{S} = 10\ \mathrm{V}$, $R_1 = 1\ \mathrm{k \Omega}$, $R_2 = 2\ \mathrm{k \Omega}$, and $R_\mathrm{L} = 100\ \mathrm{k \Omega}.$

Since the load resistance is large compared to the other resistances, the output voltage V_L will be approximately:

${2\ \mathrm{k \Omega} \over 1\ \mathrm{k \Omega} + 2\ \mathrm{k \Omega} } \cdot 10\ \mathrm{V} = {2 \over 3} \cdot 10\ \mathrm{V} \approx 6.667\ \mathrm{V}.$

Due to the load resistance, however, it will actually be slightly lower: ≈ 6.623 V.

One of the advantages of the potential divider compared to a variable resistor in series with the source is that, while variable resistors have a maximum resistance where some current will always flow, dividers are able to vary the output voltage from maximum (V_S) to ground (zero volts) as the wiper moves from one end of the potentiometer to the other. There is, however, always a small amount of contact resistance.

In addition, the load resistance is often not known and therefore simply placing a variable resistor in series with the load could have a negligible effect or an excessive effect, depending on the load.

Early patents

• US patent 131,334, Thomas Edison, "Coiled resistance wire rheostat", issued 1872-9-17  _{/dead link - need update/}
• Mary Hallock-Greenewalt invented a type of nonlinear rheostat for use in her visual-music instrument, the Sarabet (US patent 1,357,773 ) _{/dead link - need update/}

See also

• Potentiometric sensor
• Trimmer

External links

• .PDF edition of Carl David Todd (ed), "The Potentiometer Handbook",McGraw Hill, New York 1975 ISBN 0-07-006690-6
• Rheostat - Interactive Java Tutorial National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
• Pictures of measuring potentiometers
• Electrical calibration equipment including various measurement potentiometers
• The Secret Life of Pots - Dissecting and repairing potentiometers
• Making a rheostat
• Potentiometer calculations as voltage divider - loaded and open circuit (unloaded)