A New Gas Sensor of a Thin-Film Diode and Low-Power, Area-Efficient Readout Circuit

Abstract

The study presents a new gas sensor made of a novel organic diode with vertical nano-junctions and its low-power, area-efficient readout circuit. There are seven parts included in the readout system. First part is a preamplifier, which is composed of trans-impedance to convert the output current of a gas sensor into voltage. Second part is a peak-detect-and-hold circuit. It can detect the maximum voltage and holds its value, the initial value. Third part is a divider, which is used to calculate the ratio of saturation current to initial current. Fourth part is the saturation detector, which is used to detect when the output current of the VNJ-P3HT diode doesn\'t change anymore (that is, the responses are saturated). Fifth part is the auto-reset circuit, which is used to detect when the sensor device starts to react with gas and reset the voltage value of the peak detect-and-hold circuit. Sixth part is a logic gate and a buffer. When the sensor device is reacting with gas and the responses are saturated, the response result is outputted through the logic gate and buffer. Otherwise, the zero is outputted. Seventh part is a micro-processor control unit (MCU). STM32 is the CPU of proposed MCU by ALIENTEK. The ADC of MCU is used to transform the output data of readout circuit. Then the LCD displays the results. The designed circuit is accomplished by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) 0.35 mu m 2P4M 3.3V mixed-signal CMOS process.