A Novel Array-Based "Electronic Nose" with On-Chip Neural Classifer

Mosaix proposes to develop a highly-integrated, low-cost, and robust single chip electronic nose based on a novel class of organic chemoresistive compounds recently reported. This proposed self-contained sensor device is fully compatible with conventional silicon CMOS VLSI fabrication techniques and combines on-chip integration of: (1) an array of broadly responsive gas phase sensor elements based on a large class of carbon black - organic polymer thin film composites; (2) an analog-to-digital converter; and (3) a fully reconfigurable feedforward / time-lagged neuro-processor for on-line and real-time analyte pattern classification [2]. Because of this system-on-a-chip design strategy, in chich both the sensing and analysis of the analyte gases are performed on-chip, interfacing and communicating with the sensor chip is tremendously simplified. This has the direct benefits of: (1) allowing quick and easy data acquisition by simplifying the interface of the sensor chip to teh end-user's data-acquisition / data-logging computer equipment; and (2) enabling the miniaturization of fully autonomous and stand-alone gas phase sensors along with their in-situ deployment in a wide variety of environments. An important factor in the design strategy was to select and optimize sensor elements fully compatible with conventaional silicon technology. This allows the leveraging of the silicon industries tremendous know-how in processing and fabrication techniques and furthermore, enables system-on-a-chip integration, thereby increasing sensor reliability, reducing sensor size (single chip), power (milliwatts), and cost (<$20/chip).