I-Corps Teams: Customer Discovery Activity for Microelectromechanical Systems based Gas Sensors

这个i-Corps项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是：它提供了一个市场就绪的气体传感器系统，用于监控危险和工业气体泄漏，如氯和氨。尽管从技术、安全和环境的角度来看，检测工业气体是至关重要的，但需要一种简单的技术来在现场检测此类工业气体泄漏。该团队的便携式气体传感器系统将潜在地满足这一需求。如果成功，建议的传感器系统将在不同的领域有潜在的应用，如：涉及食品、服装和纸张的漂白行业、农业、国防等。这个i-Corps项目专注于一种微型气体传感器系统，以检测工业气体的泄漏。该传感器系统由纳米尺度的金属氧化层组成，它将由石墨烯和金属氧化物的纳米复合材料制成。这种复合材料具有低阻、高比表面积等优异性能，这对提高气敏元件的性能具有重要意义。此外，这种复合层还可以进行优化，以实现快速的传感器响应和增强对特定气体的选择性。传感器层的低阻抗将允许设计低阻抗外围电路，而高活性表面积将允许传感器的快速响应和改进的选择性。传感器的设计可以通过集成微机械电阻加热器和催化层来降低运行温度，从而降低功耗。传感器的性能可以在环境条件下针对不同的气体进行优化。通过无线技术集成信号传输的能力也将被研究用于该传感器系统。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is: it presents a market ready gas sensor system to monitor hazardous and industrial gas leakages such as chlorine and ammonia. Although detection of industrial gases is critical from technical, safety and environmental perspectives, there is a need for a straightforward technology to detect such industrial gas leakages on site. This team's portable gas sensor system will potentially satisfy this need. If successful, the proposed sensor system has potential applications in diverse fields such as: bleaching industries involving food, clothes and papers, agriculture, defense, and others.This I-Corps project focuses on a micro-sized gas sensor system to detect leakage of industrial gases. This sensor system consists of nanoscale metal-oxide layer which will be made using a nanocomposite of graphene and metal oxides. Such composites have attractive properties such as low resistance and high active surface-area, which are important to enhance the performance of gas sensors. Also, this composite layer can be optimized for fast sensor response and enhanced selectivity for a particular gas. The low resistance of a sensor layer will allow designing of low impedance peripheral circuits while high active surface-area will allow fast response and improved selectivity of sensors. The sensors can be designed to reduce power consumption by reducing operation temperatures with integration of micromachined resistive heaters and catalyst layers. The sensor properties can be optimized for different gases at ambient conditions. The ability to integrate signal transfer by wireless technique will also be investigated for this sensor system.