Swiss Technology Award 2004
The work carried out at the Physical Electronics Laboratory of the ETH Zurich by a team composed by Andreas Hierlemann, Markus Graf, Diego Barrettino and Stefano Taschini (from left to right in the picture below) has been awarded the Swiss Technology Award 2004 for Nature and Environment. The Microchemical Gas-Analysis System (dubbed McGAS) brings together integrated electronic circuits, MEMS structures and material science into a single-chip solution for gas-sensing applications.
Nanotechnology makes it possible to produce an engineered chemical-sensing layer that is deposited on miniaturized hotplates (less than half a millimeter in diameter). This semiconductor material is heated up to a maximum of 400 °C thus becoming sensitive to chemical compounds in the air. The device in the picture shows a chip with three exposed hotplates, while the electronics is protected by a hepoxydic resin.
Distinct metal-oxide-based (tin oxide, indium oxide) nanocrystalline films with different noble-metal dopings serve as sensitive layers to detect environmentally relevant gases such as carbon monoxide, ozone, nitrogen oxide, hydrogen or hydrocarbons. This system potentially serves a wide variety of applications such as gas hazard and leakage detection in household and industrial settings, indoor air quality monitoring in household and automobile applications, and it can be used as personal safety device or in conjunction with traffic guidance systems to monitor and regulate local air pollution.
This sensor system was developed in collaboration with the Institute for Physical Chemistry of the University of Tübingen.
On-line: Alles auf einem Chip (in German, from the Swiss Technology Award web-site)