7.4.1 Chemical Sensors for Indoor Applications
- Event
- 14th International Meeting on Chemical Sensors - IMCS 2012
2012-05-20 - 2012-05-23
Nürnberg/Nuremberg, Germany - Chapter
- 7.4 EU NetAir (Special Session) II
- Author(s)
- A. Schütze - Lab for Measurement Technology, Dept. of Mechatronics, Saarland University (Germany)
- Pages
- 630 - 634
- DOI
- 10.5162/IMCS2012/7.4.1
- ISBN
- 978-3-9813484-2-2
- Price
- free
Abstract
People spend an increasing amount of their time indoors. Thus, environmental conditions and air quality but also safety aspects are of specific concern in indoor settings. This contribution gives an overview of chemical sensor technologies used for indoor applications, focusing on explosive gas leak and fire detection as well as indoor air quality as the most relevant applications. These applications are traditionally addressed with a variety of technologies, such as metal-oxide semiconductor gas sensors for gas leak detection or infrared sensors for CO2 monitoring. Increased requirements led to multisensor developments especially for security applications such as fire detection which demand a high reliability of the sensor system. In recent years, modern signal processing techniques have increasingly been used to overcome typical problems of chemical sensors, especially limited selectivity as well as drift and aging. Some examples for state-of-the-art chemical sensor systems for indoor applications are given showing the growing potential in this area. Novel developments such as gas sensitive field effect transistors (GasFETs), which are currently commercially introduced, and sensor self-monitoring strategies for increased reliability are discussed as well as trends for the future.