Gas Sensors and the Infrastructure for Smart Buildings
The quality of the air we breathe - whether outdoors or indoors in homes, schools and buildings - has a significant bearing on personal well-being. In fact, it is well recognized that indoor air quality is often times less desirable for overall health than outdoor air quality. The ability to precisely detect the various constituent gases allows us to make decisions to improve the quality of our lives and avoid potentially dangerous situations. Modern dwelling structures are being equipped with network and data infrastructure to enable them to become smarter - which even a few years ago was difficult to imagine. Such smart buildings use a variety of sensors, and this talk will examine the role of gas sensors in a smart building and the emerging trends in sensor infrastructure that is aiding the adoption of gas sensors. For such applications, gas sensors are required to be highly accurate, as well as low cost, low power and miniaturized. In recent years, MEMS technology has been applied to accurate gas sensing but challenges remain, such as detecting inert gases, ensuring stability over time, and robustness to environmental conditions, to name a few. This presentation will review the gas sensing needs of smart buildings and state-of-the-art sensing solutions that can address such needs.