Seminario S. Zampolli

Il giorno 19 dicembre alle ore 15,30 presso l'aula 412 Stefano Zampolli (CNR-IMM Bologna) terra' un seminario dal titolo

Overview of CNR-IMM Bologna research activities on 
chemical sensors and microsystems, with particular highlight on 
"Novel system-in-package digital MOX sensors with exceptional identification capabilities enabled by impedance readout and machine learning"

Abstract

The seminar will start with a brief overview of the main CNR-IMM Bologna R&D activities on Chemical and Physical Microsystems. CNR-IMM Bologna is equipped with a 500m2 Clean-Room for Research and Development of Microelectronics, Microsystems and Nanomaterials. In the field of Microsystems, the two Research groups on “Physical MEMS” and “Chemical MEMS” have a long-lasting expertise on high-TRL development of Sensors and Microsystems, including successful technology transfer towards Italian and international SMEs and start-up creation.
Then, the seminar will focus on the recent work on the “Smart Cable Air” (SCA) device, which is a multi-sensor system-in-package (SiP) conceived and designed by Sensichips srl [1] in collaboration with the University of Pisa and CNR-IMM Bologna. SCA is based on the SENSIPLUS microchip, which integrates a fully featured Electrochemical Impedance Spectrometer (EIS) with general purpose re-configurable analog front-ends and uses a multi-drop single wire serial bus interface conceived for distributed sensor arrays for large area monitoring (“Smart Cables”) that can be configured up to 150 meters long. The SENSIPLUS microchip is developed in a 0.18um mixed signal CMOS process and fabricated at the UMC semiconductor foundry in Taiwan. SENSIPLUS is used to drive and acquire SENSIMOX, a MEMS-based Ultra-Low-Power (ULP) Metal Oxide Seminconductor (MOX) sensor array, described previously in [2] and optimized in terms of die size, pad layout and sensing layer composition. A particular characteristic of the optimized SENSIMOX sensors is the nanostructured tin oxide (SnO2) thin-film sensing layer, which is deposited at wafer level by means of the M-RGTO process described in [3]. This allows for the batch fabrication of over 3000 sensor arrays on a single 4” wafer, with high reproducibility at a low cost. The SCA device performs EIS sensing layer readout and fast temperature cycled operation (TCO) of the sensor hotplate for discriminative gas classification.
The combination of SENSIPLUS with SENSIMOX in a miniature SiP, complemented by the proprietary SENSIPLUS Learning Machine (SLM) algorithms, has enabled the team to demonstrate a miniature multisensory gas sensing device (size 5.5 mm, weight 0.37 g and 2.5 mW average power consumption) with unparalleled classification and identification capabilities.

[1] https://sensichips.com/smart-cable-air/

[2] I. Elmi et al., Sensors and Actuators: B. Chemical 135 (2008) 342-351

[3] I. Elmi et al., Sensors and Actuators: B. Chemical 131 (2008) 548-555