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Component design and testing for a miniaturised autonomous sensor based on a nanowire materials platform

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Abstract

We present the design considerations of an autonomous wireless sensor and discuss the fabrication and testing of the various components including the energy harvester, the active sensing devices and the power management and sensor interface circuits. A common materials platform, namely, nanowires, enables us to fabricate state-of-the-art components at reduced volume and show chemical sensing within the available energy budget. We demonstrate a photovoltaic mini-module made of silicon nanowire solar cells, each of 0.5 mm2 area, which delivers a power of 260 μW and an open circuit voltage of 2 V at one sun illumination. Using nanowire platforms two sensing applications are presented. Combining functionalised suspended Si nanowires with a novel microfluidic fluid delivery system, fully integrated microfluidic–sensor devices are examined as sensors for streptavidin and pH, whereas, using a microchip modified with Pd nanowires provides a power efficient and fast early hydrogen gas detection method. Finally, an ultra-low power, efficient solar energy harvesting and sensing microsystem augmented with a 6 mAh rechargeable battery allows for less than 20 μW power consumption and 425 h sensor operation even without energy harvesting.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge support from the European Commission Framework 7 ICT-FET-Proactive funded project SiNAPS (contract number 257856) for financial support of this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tyndall National Institute, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland

    Giorgos Fagas, Michael Nolan, Yordan M. Georgiev, Ran Yu, Olan Lotty, Nikolay Petkov & Justin D. Holmes

  2. Institute of Photonic Technology, Jena, Germany

    Guobin Jia, Björn Eisenhawer, Annett Gawlik & Fritz Falk

  3. Ecole Polytechnique Federal Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland

    Naser Khosropour, Elizabeth Buitrago, Montserrat Fernández-Bolaños Badia, Francois Krummenacher, Adrian M. Ionescu & Maher Kayal

  4. Imperial College London, London, UK

    Adrian M. Nightingale & John C. de Mello

  5. Nanosens BV, Berkelkade 11, 7201 JE, Zutphen, The Netherlands

    Erik Puik, Franc van der Bent, Rik Lafeber, Rajesh Ramaneti, Hien Duy Tong & Cees van Rijn

Authors
  1. Giorgos Fagas
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  2. Michael Nolan
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  3. Yordan M. Georgiev
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  4. Ran Yu
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  12. Naser Khosropour
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  13. Elizabeth Buitrago
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  14. Montserrat Fernández-Bolaños Badia
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  17. Maher Kayal
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  18. Adrian M. Nightingale
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  19. John C. de Mello
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  20. Erik Puik
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  21. Franc van der Bent
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  23. Rajesh Ramaneti
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  24. Hien Duy Tong
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Correspondence to Giorgos Fagas.

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Fagas, G., Nolan, M., Georgiev, Y.M. et al. Component design and testing for a miniaturised autonomous sensor based on a nanowire materials platform. Microsyst Technol 20, 971–988 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-014-2100-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-014-2100-4

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