Integrated CMOS porous sensor
First Claim
1. An integrated sensor device comprising:
- MOS circuits in a semiconductor substrate,an interconnect stack comprising interconnect levels having interconnect conductors and insulating dielectric, said interconnect levels being over the substrate and interconnecting the MOS circuits,a sensor including;
electrodes embedded in the insulating dielectric and being integrally formed with the interconnect conductors, the electrodes including electrodes for forming a capacitive sensor and electrodes for forming a resistive sensor, anda porous material for ingress of gas or humidity being sensed, andwherein the MOS circuits include an A-to-D converter for processing signals from the sensor electrodes, said A-to-D converter converting analog data to digital data, the digital data utilized when performing gas concentration measurements by detecting together changes of conductivity of the sensor porous material detected at the resistive sensor and changes of dielectric constant of the sensor porous material detected at the capacitive sensor.
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Accused Products
Abstract
A single chip wireless sensor (1) comprises a microcontroller (2) connected by a transmit/receive interface (3) to a wireless antenna (4). The microcontroller (2) is also connected to an 8 kB RAM (5), a USB interface (6), an RS232 interface (8), 64 kB flash memory (9), and a 32 kHz crystal (10). The device (1) senses humidity and temperature, and a humidity sensor (11) is connected by an 18 bit ΣΔ A-to-D converter (12) to the microcontroller (2) and a temperature sensor (13) is connected by a 12 bit SAR A-to-D converter (14) to the microcontroller (2). The device (1) is an integrated chip manufactured in a single process in which both the electronics and sensor components are manufactured using standard CMOS processing techniques, applied to achieve both electronic and sensing components in an integrated process.
53 Citations
19 Claims
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1. An integrated sensor device comprising:
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MOS circuits in a semiconductor substrate, an interconnect stack comprising interconnect levels having interconnect conductors and insulating dielectric, said interconnect levels being over the substrate and interconnecting the MOS circuits, a sensor including; electrodes embedded in the insulating dielectric and being integrally formed with the interconnect conductors, the electrodes including electrodes for forming a capacitive sensor and electrodes for forming a resistive sensor, and a porous material for ingress of gas or humidity being sensed, and wherein the MOS circuits include an A-to-D converter for processing signals from the sensor electrodes, said A-to-D converter converting analog data to digital data, the digital data utilized when performing gas concentration measurements by detecting together changes of conductivity of the sensor porous material detected at the resistive sensor and changes of dielectric constant of the sensor porous material detected at the capacitive sensor. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19)
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Specification