On-line Magazine 'Sensors & Transducers' (S&T e-Digest)

    (ISSN 1726- 5479)

Vol. 54, Issue 4, April 2005, pp. 310-319

Environmental Influences on SMO Sensors’ Performance

Jian-Wei GONG¹, Quan-Fang CHEN¹*, Ming-Ren LIAN², Nen-Chin LIU²

¹Department of Mechanical, Material & Aerospace Engineering,

University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, 32826, U.S.A.

Ph. (407) 823 2152 Fax: (407) 823 0208; E-mail: jgong@ucf.edu

²TYCO SAFETY PRODUCTS-Sensormatic

6600 Congress Avenue, Boca Raton, FL, 33487 U.S.A.

 Ph. (561) 912 6587; fax: (561) 912 6822; E-mail: mlian@tycoint.com

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed

E-mail: qchen@mail.ucf.edu

Received: 19 March 2005 / Accepted: 12 April 2005  / Published: 20 April 2005

Abstract: Micromachined semiconductor metal oxide (SMO) gas sensors have good prospect of being solution as future gas sensor technology in terms of sensitivity, robustness, simple signal processing, low production cost and small size. However, there are some challenges for the  commercialization of SMO sensor to meet both performance-related and reliability-related requirements, especially false alarm problems caused by environmental induced drifts and shifts. Several environmental influence factors that affect SMO sensor’s performance, in terms of temperature variation, relative humidity and possibly others like light and oxygen partial pressure, are discussed in this paper. Principles behinds these influences are presented and schemes of eliminating these influences are reviewed and proposed.

Keywords: MEMS, SMO sensors, metal oxide gas sensors, ambient temperature, relative humidity, feedback control

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