28.7 CMOS monolithic airborne-particulate-matter detector based on 32 capacitive sensors with a resolution of 65zF rms

In this paper, a CMOS monolithic system for the detection through a capacitive measurement of the airborne PM deposited on the surface of the chip is demonstrated. The sensor, whose electrodes are fabricated using the top metal layer of a standard CMOS technology without post-processing steps, features 32 channels with resolution better than 100zF rms that allow a real-time detection, counting and sizing of PM with an equivalent diameter greater than 1μm deposited on the active area of 1.15mm2. The miniaturization and low-power consumption of the resulting system go beyond the state of the art for PM detectors, paving the way to pervasive (smartphone-embeddable) high-performance air quality monitoring and control strategies.