CMOS Interfacing for Integrated Gas Sensors: A Review

Modern gas sensor technology is becoming an important part of our lives. It has been applied within the home (monitoring CO levels from boilers), the workplace (e.g., checking levels of toxic gases) to healthcare (monitoring gases in hospitals). However, historically the high price of gas sensors has limited market penetration to niche applications, such as safety in mines or petrochemical plants. The high price may be attributed to several different components: (1) cost of a predominantly manual manufacturing process; (2) need for interface circuitry in the form of discrete components on a PCB; and (3) fireproof packaging, making the cost of gas detection instruments typically many hundreds of dollars. Consequently, there has been a considerable effort over the past 20 years, towards the goal of low-cost ($1-$5) gas sensors, employing modern microelectronics technology to manufacture both the sensing element and the signal conditioning circuitry on a single silicon chip. In this paper, we review the emerging field of CMOS gas sensors and focus upon the integration of two main gas-sensing principles, namely, resistive and electrochemical and associated circuitry by CMOS technology. We believe that the combination of CMOS technology with more recent MEMS processing is now mature enough to deliver the exacting demands required to make low-power, low-cost smart gas sensors in high volume and this should result in a new generation of CMOS gas sensors. These new integrated, mass-produced gas sensors could open up mass markets and affect our everyday lives through application in cars, cell phones, watches, etc.