A Novel Miniature and Selective CMOS Gas Sensor for Gas Mixture Analysis-Part 2: Emphasis on Physical Aspects

Moshe Avraham; Sara Stolyarova; Tanya Blank; Sharon Bar-Lev; Gady Golan; Yael Nemirovsky

doi:10.3390/mi11060587

A Novel Miniature and Selective CMOS Gas Sensor for Gas Mixture Analysis-Part 2: Emphasis on Physical Aspects

Micromachines (Basel). 2020 Jun 11;11(6):587. doi: 10.3390/mi11060587.

Authors

Moshe Avraham^{1

2}, Sara Stolyarova¹, Tanya Blank¹, Sharon Bar-Lev¹, Gady Golan², Yael Nemirovsky¹

Affiliations

¹ Electrical Engineering Department, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 32000, Israel.
² Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics, Ariel University, Ariel 40700, Israel.

Abstract

This is a second part of the paper presenting a miniature, combustion-type gas sensor (dubbed GMOS) based on a novel thermal sensor (dubbed TMOS). The TMOS is a micromachined CMOS-SOI transistor, which acts as the sensing element and is integrated with a catalytic reaction plate, where ignition of the gas takes place. Part 1 focused on the chemical and technological aspects of the sensor. In part 2, the emphasis is on the physical aspects of the reaction micro-hot plate on which the catalytic layer is deposited. The three main challenges in designing the hot plate are addressed: (i) How to design a hot plate operating in air, with a low thermal conductivity; (ii) how to measure the temperature of the hot plate during operation; (iii) how to reduce the total consumed power during operation. Reported simulated as well as analytical models and measured results are in good agreement.

Keywords: CMOS-SOI-MEMS gas sensor; MEMS simulations and modeling; catalytic micro hot-plate; thermal gas sensor.