The design of a low power carbon nanotube chemical sensor system

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a hybrid CNT/CMOS chemical sensor system that comprises of a carbon nanotube sensor array and a CMOS interface chip. The full system, including the sensor, consumes 32μW at 1.83kS/s readout rate, accomplished through an extensive use of CAD tools and a model-based architecture optimization. A redundant use of CNT sensors in the frontend increases the reliability of the system.

REFERENCES

• 1: J. Kong, N. Franklin, C. Shou, M. Chapline, S. Peng, K. Cho, and H. Dai, "Nanotube molecular wires as chemical sensors," Science, pp. 622--625, January 2000.
• 2: M. Malfatti, D. Stoppa, A. Simoni, L. Lorenzelli, A. Adami, and A. Baschirotto, "A CMOS interface for a gas-sensor array with a 0.5% linearity over the 500 KΩ -to-1 GΩ range and ± 2.5 degree temperature control accuracy," in ISSCC Digest of Technical Papers, 2006.
• 3: D. Barrettino, M. Graf, S. Taschini, S. hafizovic, C. Hagleitner, and A. Hierlemann, "CMOS monolithic metal-oxide gas sensor microsystems," IEEE Sensors Journal, vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 276--286, April 2006.
• 4: T. S. Cho, K.-J. Lee, J. Kong, and A. Chandrakasan, "A low power carbon nanotube chemical sensor system," in Proceedings of the IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC), 2007.
• 5: J. Kong, H. Soh, A. Cassell, C. Quate, and H. Dai, "Synthesis of individual single-walled carbon nanotubes on patterned silicon wafers," Nature, vol. 395, no. 6705, pp. 878--881, 1998.
• 6: N. Verma and A. Chandrakasan, "An ultra low energy 12-bit rate-resolution scalable SAR ADC for wireless sensor nodes," IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol. 42, no. 6, pp. 1196--1205, June 2007.
• 7: M. Grassi, P. Malcovati, and A. Baschirotto, "A 0.1% accuracy 100 Ω - 20 MΩ dynamic range integrated gas sensor interface circuit with 13+4 bit digital output," in Proceedings of European Solid-State Circuits Conference (ESSCIRC), 2005.
• 8: A. Flammini, D. Marioli, and A. Taroni, "A low-cost interface to high-value resistive sensors varying over a wide range," IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, vol. 53, no. 4, pp. 1052--1056, August 2004.
• 9: U. Frey, M. Graf, S. Taschini, K. U. Kirstein, and A. Hierlemann, "A digital CMOS architecture for a micro-hotplate array," IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol. 42, no. 2, pp. 441--450, February 2007.
• 10: F. Liu, K. Wang, D. Zhang, and C. Zhou, "Noise in carbon nanotube field effect transistors," Applied Physics Letters, vol. 89, 2006.
• 11: J. Zhao, A. Buldum, J. Han, and J. Lu, "Gas molecule adsorption in carbon nanotubes and nanotube bundles," Nanotechnology, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 195--200, 2002.
• 12: R. Shaffer and S. Rose-Pehrsson, "Improved probabilistic neural network algorithm for chemical sensor array pattern recognition," Analytical Chemistry, vol. 71, no. 19, pp. 4263--4271, October 1999.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  B. Hardware
  B.7 INTEGRATED CIRCUITS
      B.7.0 General

General Terms:
Design

Keywords:
carbon nanotube, low power, sensor system