About CMOSens

A quantum leap in sensor technology!

In today's age of automation and control, sensors are gaining more and more significance. Intelligent sensor solutions make a significant contribution to improved quality, better process control, lower process cost and more safety. State of the art sensor solutions not only offer high functionality and high reliability but they also reduce cost and therefore offer an important benefit to the customer.
In the last 15 years, hardly any technology has developed so impressively as the semiconductor technology. While the performance was enhanced many times over, cost droped significantly. With CMOSens®, Sensirion takes advantage of these innovations in order to develop outstanding sensor systems for our customers. CMOSens® technology represents an actual quantum leap with regard to precision, stability and cost reduction.

The CMOSens^® principle

...precise
CMOSens® marks the fusion of sensor and evaluation circuitry on one CMOS chip. The core of every CMOSens® sensor is a specially developed, patented semiconductor chip. Special sensing structures are implemented on the chip by means of micro systems engineering. They detect precisely and reliable the desired physical parameters such as relative humidity, temperature or mass flow. The fusion of sensor and evaluation circuitry on one CMOS chip guarantees that the sensitive, analog sensor signals can be amplified and digitized without noise and with high precision. Sensors with CMOSens® technology therefore achieve an excellent measurement accuracy as well as high repeatability and offset stability.

...intelligent
The sensor element itself is just as important for each CMOSens® sensor as the directly integrated evaluation circuitry. CMOSens® sensors include a temperature sensor that is used for exact temperature compensation. CMOSens® sensors also contain additional intelligence on the chip for functional control of the sensor element, for low-power functions, and also for complete linearization and temperature compensation. Thanks to this integration of patented readout circuitry, a sensor system can be produced that offers higher functionality and intelligence at lower cost.

...reliable
The reliability of an electronic instrument is essentially determined by the number of electrical contacts. The electrical contact of a poor solder point can become drastically worse over time. In particular, weak analog signals can all of a sudden lead to the total failure of the instrument. CMOSens® technology is based upon well proven, reliable standard processes of CMOS semiconductor manufacturing. All of the analog signal processing is performed on the same chip for CMOSens® sensors. This has the advantage of eliminating noise-susceptible solder points for small analog signals. This explains the very high reliability of CMOSens® sensors even under very harsh operating conditions.

...cost effective
As a standard process for semiconductor manufacturing, CMOS is optimised for reliable and cost-effective volume production. Sensors with CMOSens® technology benefit from this underlying cost optimization and therefore offer you an outstanding price-performance ratio. Moreover, the fusion of sensor and readout circuitry leads to reduced system cost thanks in comparison with conventional sensor systems. Hence, CMOSens® users receive exemplary reliability and quality at significantly reduced cost.

...CMOS (Ce-mos)
is the standard technology for integrated circuit fabrication. CMOS chips are commonly known as 'semiconductor chips', 'silicon chips' or 'computer chips'. They are broadly used in personal computers, mobile phones and many other devices for communication or information technology. The best example for a CMOS chip is probably the Intel Pentium© processor you might have in your own personal computer.