A novel uncooled thermal sensor based on a suspended transistor, fabricated in standard CMOS-SOI process, and released by dry etching, dubbed Digital TMOS, has been developed. Using the transistor as the sensing element has advantages in terms of internal gain, low power, low-cost technology, and high temperature sensitivity. A two channel radiometer, based on the new nano-metric CMOS-SOI-NEMS Technology, enables remote temperature sensing as well as emissivity sensing of the forehead and body temperatures of people, with high accuracy and high resolution. Body temperature is an indicator of human physiological activity and health, especially in pediatrics, surgery, and general emergency departments. This was already recognized in past pandemics such as SARS, EBOLA, and Chicken Flu. Nowadays, with the spread of COVID-19, forehead temperature measurements are used widely to screen people for the illness. Measuring the temperature of the forehead using remote sensing is safe and convenient and there are a large number of available commercial instruments, but studies show that the measurements are not accurate. The surface emissivity of an object has the most significant effect on the measured temperature by IR remote sensing. This work describes the achievements towards high-performance, low-cost, low power, mobile radiometry, to rapidly screen for fever to identify victims of the coronavirus (COVID-19). The main two aspects of the innovation of this study are the use of the new thermal sensor for measurements and the extensive modeling of this sensor.
Keywords: COVID-19; body temperature; digital TMOS; forehead temperature; infrared thermometer; skin emissivity; thermography; thermometry.