MIGNON

Chemical microsensors have not had the same industrial development as physical microsensors, such as accelerometers or gyroscopes for example. There are many reasons for this, including the facts that : - the markets are niche markets specific to the species to be detected (bottleneck a), - for each of the species to be detected, an appropriate sensitive layer must be developed or chosen (bottleneck b), - chemical sensors are less reliable and have shorter life spans than physical sensors and they have greater drift (bottleneck c). In order to avoid having to choose or develop a new sensitive layer for each application depending on the species to be detected and the possible interferents (bottleneck b), MIGNON project propose to do chemical detection without using a sensitive layer: the detection is based on the measurement of the physical properties of the gas. Sensors of that kind already exists but due to their working principle they do not exhibit any selectivity. In the MIGNON project, we propose to combine two sensors for multiple physical parameter measurements in order to discriminate different gas mixtures. Then, using two generic sensors, it will be possible to address different niche markets without any long development process (bottleneck a). Moreover, the absence of a sensitive coating, which is subjected to sorption or redox phenomena in classical chemical sensors, leads to a more reliable and reversible behavior (bottleneck c). The measurement of the gas physical properties will be done using silicon resonant MEMS. The MIGNON project will not be focused on the transducer part, but it will rather address the complete measurement chain (sensor, instrumentation and data processing). The proof of concept will be done within the project for applications involving leakage detection of industrial gases, such as O2, N2, H2, CH4, CO2 and He.