Identification of Different Vapors Using a Single Temperature Modulated Polymer Sensor With a Novel Signal Processing Technique

This paper reports on a novel temperature modulation technique to improve the ability of a single carbon black/polymer resistive sensor to discriminate, identify and characterize environmental pollutants. Such a sensor can be low cost, low-power consumption, highly reliable, and thus ideal for indoor gas monitoring. Here, a carbon black/polyvinylpyrrolidone film was deposited onto an SOI-CMOS microhotplate. A novel temperature modulation technique is proposed that allows the detection of vapors using a single chemoresistor. Identification and quantification of water, methanol and ethanol vapors with different concentrations (water: 0-6000 ppm, methanol: 1360-5430 ppm and ethanol: 2270-9080 ppm) are shown.