Individual nanowire chemical sensor system self-powered with energy scavenging technologies

Abstract

A fully autonomous chemical gas sensor system is presented. This system is based on the exploitation of dissipated power at individual nanowires by Joule effect due to the bias current applied in conductometric measurements (self-heating), which enables heating the tiny mass of these wires up to the optimum temperatures for gas sensing applications. This novel approach only requires few miliwatts to bias, heat and measure the sensors. We also demonstrate that the low-power requirements of these devices can be supplied by state-of-the-art energy scavenging technologies, like thermoelectric microgenerators. For all this, the here-presented system is an important step forward toward fully autonomous and distributed gas sensor networks without the need of battery replacement.