SBIR Phase I: Lithographic Patterning of Multiple Porous Crystalline Thin Films on Working Silicon Devices for Gas Sensing Applications

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to enable a new class of gas sensors for the consumer market, specifically in wearables, Internet of Things and smartphones. The technology proposed will sense multiple gases using an inexpensive, compact device with small power requirement. Traditional sensing technology requires a separate device for each gas, making wearable or portable devices impractical. These new devices will be applied in indoor air quality monitoring products such as thermostats, smart lighting, and surveillance cameras; and indoor and outdoor air quality monitoring for wearables and smartphones. These are emerging consumer use cases that could easily exceed 1B units by 2020. The importance of distributed air quality monitoring has been highlighted by recent reports that identify indoor pollution as a significant fraction of the overall pollution exposure for many people. Indoor pollutants vary widely based on the appliances and ventilation used in a particular home or commercial setting, which necessitates continuous monitoring in order to address the problem. There is currently no gas sensor technology capable of delivering this performance with acceptable cost, size, and power requirement. This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will build a foundation for the incorporation of porous crystalline hybrid materials into electronic devices. Porous crystalline hybrids have emerged in recent years as a highly attractive class of materials for a host of applications including sensing, catalysis, gas separation, and low-k dielectric materials. For many of these applications the materials must be incorporated into an electronic device as a thin film coating. The techniques for lithographic deposition of these materials, in particular the operating conditions they can endure after being deposited, are almost completely unexplored. Deposition of multiple different porous crystalline hybrids has not been demonstrated. This proposal aims to overcome these obstacles by identifying conditions for reversible protection of porous crystalline hybrid materials during subsequent deposition steps. We anticipate that this work will form the basis for incorporating porous crystals into devices both for gas sensors and for other applications.