Precision Electronic Module Design for Electronic-Nose Platforms

Number of Students : 2
Guides : Hardik J Pandya

Electronic nose platforms demonstrate a wide range of applications, such as disease diagnosis, food product quality assessment, agriculture, etc. In principle, these devices mimic the sense of smell of organisms. An important aspect of E-Nose development is the selection of sensors and electronic modules. Both non-selective, general-purpose, and highly selective sensors should be used to analyze gases typical for a selected emission source. For healthcare applications such as the detection of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in breath, the sensitivity of sensors should be in the parts per billion (ppb) range. Microfabricated chemiresistive and surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensors are being developed to achieve this. The resistive gas sensors need precision current sensing circuits to detect current changes in micro/nano amperes of range with repeatability and a high signal-to-noise ratio. The SAW sensors work based on the piezoelectric effect. It needs a variable voltage constant frequency driver circuit to create an input acoustic wave and a sensing circuit that converts the acoustic wave at the output to voltage. The students will work on the design, simulation, and fabrication of SAW sensors and develop electronic modules for these sensors during the project duration. At the end of the project, the students will learn analog electronic circuit design for high-speed and precision applications, electronic module development for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), Electronic and MEMS packaging, and Biomedical device design. All students will be provided access to Class 100/1000 clean room facilities and will be trained on microengineering technologies. The work is in collaboration with lead liver transplant surgeons.