Floating-gate MOS transistors have been widely used in diverse analog and digital applications. One of these is as a charge sensitive device in sensors for pH measurement in solutions or using gates with metals like Pd or Pt for hydrogen sensing. Efforts are being made to monolithically integrate sensors together with controlling and signal processing electronics using standard technologies. This can be achieved with the demonstrated compatibility between available CMOS technology and MEMS technology. In this paper an in-depth analysis is done regarding the reliability of floating-gate MOS transistors when charge produced by a chemical reaction between metallic oxide thin films with either reducing or oxidizing gases is present. These chemical reactions need temperatures around 200 °C or higher to take place, so thermal insulation of the sensing area must be assured for appropriate operation of the electronics at room temperature. The operation principle of the proposal here presented is confirmed by connecting the gate of a conventional MOS transistor in series with a Fe2O3 layer. It is shown that an electrochemical potential is present on the ferrite layer when reacting with propane.
This paper shows a novel design of a gas sensor system based on artificial neural networks and Floating-gate MOS Transistors (FGMOS). Two types of circuits with FGMOS transistors of minimum dimensions were designed and simulated by Simulink of Matlab; simulations and experimental measurements results were compared obtaining good expectations. The reason of using FGMOS is that ANN can also be implemented with these kinds of devices, since ANN’s based on FGMOS are able to produce pseudo Gaussian-functions. These functions give a reliable option to determine the gas concentration. A sensitive thin film can be deposited on the FGMOS’s floating gate, which produces a charge variation due to the chemical reaction between the sensitive layer and the gas species, modifying the threshold voltage thereby a correlation of drain current of the FGMOS with gas concentration can be obtained. Therefore, a generator circuit was implemented for the pseudo Gaussian signal with FGMOS. This system can be applied in environments with dangerous species such as CO2, CO, methane, propane, among others. Simulations demonstrated that the implemented proposal has a good performance as an alternative method for sensing gas concentrations, compared with conventional sensors.
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