A Phase-Domain Readout Circuit for a CMOS-Compatible Hot-Wire CO₂ Sensor

This paper presents a readout circuit for a carbon dioxide (COࠢ) sensor that measures the CO₂-dependent thermal time constant of a hot-wire transducer. The readout circuit periodically heats up the transducer and uses a phase-domain Δ Σ modulator to digitize the phase shift of the resulting temperature transients. A single resistive transducer is used both as a heater and as a temperature sensor, thus greatly simplifying its fabrication. To extract the transducer's resistance, and hence its temperature, in the presence of large heating currents, a pair of transducers is configured as a differentially driven bridge. The transducers and the readout circuit have been implemented in a standard 0.16μm CMOS technology, with an active area of 0.3 and 3.14 mm², respectively. The sensor consumes 6.8 mW from a 1.8-V supply, of which 6.3 mW is dissipated in the transducers. A resolution of 94-ppm CO₂ is achieved in a 1.8-s measurement time, which corresponds to an energy consumption of 12 mJ per measurement, >10x less than prior CO₂ sensors in CMOS technology.