A Novel Miniature and Selective CMOS Gas Sensor for Gas Mixture Analysis-Part 3: Extending the Chemical Modeling

This is the third part of the paper presenting a miniature, combustion-type gas sensor (dubbed GMOS) based on a novel thermal sensor (dubbed TMOS). The TMOS is a micromachined CMOS-SOI transistor, which acts as the sensing element and is integrated with a catalytic reaction plate, where ignition of the gas takes place. The first part was focused on the chemical and technological aspects of the sensor. In Part 2, the emphasis was on the physical aspects of the reaction micro-hot plate on which the catalytic layer is deposited. The present study focuses on applying several advanced simulation tools, which extend our understanding of the GMOS performance, as well as pellistor sensors in general. The three main challenges in simulating the performance are: (i) how to define the operating temperature based on the input parameters; (ii) how to measure the dynamics of the temperature increase during cyclic operation at a given duty cycle; (iii) how to model the correlation between the operating temperature and the sensing response. The simulated and analytical models and measured results are shown to be in good agreement.