Subthreshold transistor operation for a high sensitivity capacitive sensor

Author

Miled, Mohamed Amine ; Sawan, Mohamad

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Ecole Polytech. de Montreal, Montreal, QC

fYear

2008

fDate

4-7 May 2008

Abstract

In this paper a low-power highly sensitive capacitor sensor is presented. When interfaced to interdigitated electrodes the corresponding circuit, based on capacitance variation, allows sensing microfluidic substances in lab-on-chip applications. We demonstrate the impact of the subthreshold region of transistor on the sensitivity of the capacitive sensor while it decreases the power consumption of the circuit. The proposed capacitive sensor circuit is implemented in 0.18 mum CMOS technology and the obtained sensitivity is 69 mV/fF.

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; capacitive sensors; transistors; capacitance variation; capacitive sensor circuit; capacitive sensor sensitivity; capacitor sensor; microfluidic substance; size 0.18 mum; subthreshold transistor operation; CMOS technology; Capacitance; Capacitive sensors; Capacitors; Circuits; Energy consumption; Equations; Mirrors; Sensor phenomena and characterization; Voltage; Capacitive sensor; low power circuits; sensor sensitivity; subthreshold region;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2008. CCECE 2008. Canadian Conference on

Conference_Location

Niagara Falls, ON

ISSN

0840-7789

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-1642-4

Electronic_ISBN

0840-7789

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/CCECE.2008.4564827

Filename

4564827