CMOS Monolithic Electrochemical Gas Sensor Microsystem Using Room Temperature Ionic Liquid

The growing demand for personal healthcare monitoring requires a challenging combination of performance, size, power, and cost that is difficult to achieve with existing gas sensor technologies. This paper presents a new CMOS monolithic gas sensor microsystem that meets these requirements through a unique combination of electrochemical readout circuits, post-CMOS planar electrodes, and room temperature ionic liquid (RTIL) sensing materials. The architecture and design of the CMOS-RTIL-based monolithic gas sensor are described. The monolithic device occupies less than 0.5 mm2 per sensing channel and incorporates electrochemical biasing and readout functions with only 1.4 mW of power consumption. Oxygen was tested as an example gas, and results show that the microsystem demonstrates a highly linear response ( $R^{2} = 0.995$ ) over a 0–21% oxygen concentration range, with a limit of detection of 0.06% and a 1 s response time. Monolithic integration reduces manufacturing cost and is demonstrated to improve limits of detection by a factor of five compared to a hybrid implementation. The combined characteristics of this device offer an ideal platform for portable/wearable gas sensing in applications such as air pollutant monitoring.

[1]  Eugenio Culurciello,et al.  Noise Analysis and Performance Comparison of Low Current Measurement Systems for Biomedical Applications , 2013, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems.

[2]  J. Reiter,et al.  Ionic liquid―polymer electrolyte for amperometric solid-state NO2 sensor , 2011 .

[3]  Jinhuai Liu,et al.  Toward Membrane-Free Amperometric Gas Sensors: An Ionic Liquid–Nanoparticle Composite Approach , 2011 .

[4]  Ron Hogervorst,et al.  A compact power-efficient 3 V CMOS rail-to-rail input/output operational amplifier for VLSI cell libraries , 1994 .

[5]  Lin Li,et al.  CMOS Electrochemical Instrumentation for Biosensor Microsystems: A Review , 2016, Sensors.

[6]  Christoph Hagleitner,et al.  CMOS Single Chip Gas Detection Systems — Part I , 2002 .

[7]  Andrew J. Mason,et al.  Miniaturized planar RTIL-based eletrochemical gas sensor for real-time point-of-exposure monitoring , 2016, 2016 IEEE Healthcare Innovation Point-Of-Care Technologies Conference (HI-POCT).

[8]  J. Stetter,et al.  Amperometric gas sensors--a review. , 2008, Chemical reviews.

[9]  Syed Kamrul Islam,et al.  Integrated Circuit Biosensors Using Living Whole-Cell Bioreporters , 2007, IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers.

[10]  Heyu Yin,et al.  Rapid Measurement of Room Temperature Ionic Liquid Electrochemical Gas Sensor using Transient Double Potential Amperometry. , 2017, Sensors and actuators. B, Chemical.

[11]  Rong Wang,et al.  A Novel Amperometric O2 Gas Sensor Based on Supported Room‐Temperature Ionic Liquid Porous Polyethylene Membrane‐Coated Electrodes , 2004 .

[12]  N. Dossi,et al.  An oxygen amperometric gas sensor based on its electrocatalytic reduction in room temperature ionic liquids , 2012 .

[13]  Andrew J. Mason,et al.  Methane Recognition and Quantification by Differential Capacitance at the Hydrophobic Ionic Liquid-Electrified Metal Electrode Interface , 2013 .

[14]  Andrew J. Mason,et al.  Fabrication of a miniaturized room temperature ionic liquid gas sensor for human health and safety monitoring , 2012, 2012 IEEE Biomedical Circuits and Systems Conference (BioCAS).

[15]  Richard G. Compton,et al.  The Electrochemical Reduction of Hydrogen Sulfide on Platinum in Several Room Temperature Ionic Liquids , 2008 .

[16]  Xiaoyi Mu,et al.  Room temperature ionic-liquid electrochemical gas sensor array system for real-time mine safety monitoring , 2013, 2013 IEEE SENSORS.

[17]  Xiangqun Zeng,et al.  Ionic liquids as electrolytes for the development of a robust amperometric oxygen sensor. , 2011, Analytical chemistry.

[18]  A. J. Mason,et al.  CMOS Monolithic Nanoparticle-Coated Chemiresistor Array for Micro-Scale Gas Chromatography , 2012, IEEE Sensors Journal.

[19]  Olivier Morel,et al.  Cardiovascular effects of air pollution. , 2017, Archives of cardiovascular diseases.

[20]  Shengshui Hu,et al.  Inkjet printing of nanoporous gold electrode arrays on cellulose membranes for high-sensitive paper-like electrochemical oxygen sensors using ionic liquid electrolytes. , 2012, Analytical chemistry.

[21]  Richard G Compton,et al.  Toward membrane-free amperometric gas sensors: a microelectrode array approach. , 2010, Analytical chemistry.

[22]  L B Lave,et al.  Air pollution and human health. , 1977, Science.

[23]  Mona E. Zaghloul,et al.  A monolithic CMOS microhotplate-based gas sensor system , 2002 .

[24]  Gabor C. Temes,et al.  Circuit techniques for reducing the effects of op-amp imperfections: autozeroing, correlated double sampling, and chopper stabilization , 1996, Proc. IEEE.

[25]  N. Dossi,et al.  A Membrane Free Amperometric Gas Sensor Based on Room Temperature Ionic Liquids for the Selective Monitoring of NOx , 2012 .

[26]  C. Hagleitner,et al.  Smart single-chip gas sensor microsystem , 2001, Nature.

[27]  Giuseppe Barillaro,et al.  An integrated CMOS sensing chip for NO2 detection , 2008 .

[28]  Chang Ming Li,et al.  Highly Sensitive Nitric Oxide Sensing Using Three‐Dimensional Graphene/Ionic Liquid Nanocomposite , 2011 .

[29]  Shih-An Yu,et al.  A Portable Micro Gas Chromatography System for Lung Cancer Associated Volatile Organic Compound Detection , 2016, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[30]  Lin Li,et al.  CMOS Amperometric Instrumentation and Packaging for Biosensor Array Applications , 2011, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems.

[31]  泰伦斯・J・莫莱.  Electrochemical gas sensor , 2002 .

[32]  A. Hierlemann.  Integrated chemical microsensor systems in CMOS-technology , 2005, The 13th International Conference on Solid-State Sensors, Actuators and Microsystems, 2005. Digest of Technical Papers. TRANSDUCERS '05..

[33]  Nicolò Dossi,et al.  Electrochemical gas sensors based on paper-supported room-temperature ionic liquids for improved analysis of acid vapours , 2013, Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry.

[34]  Craig E. Banks,et al.  Electrochemical ammonia gas sensing in nonaqueous systems: A comparison of propylene carbonate with room temperature ionic liquids , 2007 .

[35]  Florin Udrea,et al.  ZnO nanowires grown on SOI CMOS substrate for ethanol sensing , 2010 .

[36]  Lin Li,et al.  Die-level photolithography and etchless parylene packaging processes for on-CMOS electrochemical biosensors , 2012, 2012 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems.

[37]  É. Colinet,et al.  Fully monolithic and ultra-compact NEMS-CMOS self-oscillator based-on single-crystal silicon resonators and low-cost CMOS circuitry , 2014, 2014 IEEE 27th International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS).

[38]  Mercedes Crego-Calama,et al.  Electrochemical sensing of ethylene employing a thin ionic-liquid layer. , 2011, Analytical chemistry.

[39]  Emanuel Carrilho,et al.  An electrochemical gas sensor based on paper supported room temperature ionic liquids. , 2012, Lab on a chip.

[40]  K. L. Shepard,et al.  Integrated VOC vapor sensing on FBAR-CMOS array , 2012, 2012 IEEE 25th International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS).

[41]  Heyu Yin,et al.  Miniaturized Planar Room Temperature Ionic Liquid Electrochemical Gas Sensor for Rapid Multiple Gas Pollutants Monitoring. , 2018, Sensors and actuators. B, Chemical.

[42]  Siegfried Selberherr,et al.  Performance and Stress Analysis of Metal Oxide Films for CMOS-Integrated Gas Sensors , 2015, Sensors.