A Compact Sub-1V Capacitively-Biased BJT-Based Temperature Sensor

This thesis presents the design of a low-power, sub-1V, BJT-based temperature sensor. It is based on a capacitively-biased (CB) BJT front-end, in which capacitors are discharged across diode-connected BJTs to obtain proportional-to-temperature (PTAT) and complementary-to-temperature (CTAT) voltages. These voltages are then digitised by a...

Digital backend for a resistor-based Wien Bridge temperature sensor

This thesis describes the design of a digital backend for a resistor-based temperature sensor realized in a 180nm CMOS process. The sensor’s analog frontend outputs a bitstream at 500kHz, which is then decimated and linearized with the help of 3 different polynomials, whose coefficients are obtained after a calibration process. A polynomial...

Large-Area All-Printed Temperature Sensing Surfaces Using Novel Composite Thermistor Materials

Surfaces which can accurately distinguish spatial and temporal changes in temperature are critical for not only flow sensors, microbolometers, process control, but also future applications like electronic skins and soft robotics. Realizing such surfaces requires the deposition of thousands of thermal sensors over large areas, a task ideally...

Compact Thermal-Diffusivity-Based Temperature Sensors in 40-nm CMOS for SoC Thermal Monitoring

An array of temperature sensors based on the thermal diffusivity (TD) of bulk silicon has been realized in a standard 40-nm CMOS process. In each TD sensor, a highly digital voltage-controlled oscillator-based Σ Δ ADC digitizes the temperature-dependent phase shift of an electrothermal filter (ETF). A phase calibration scheme is used to...

Integrated Temperature Sensors based on Heat Diffusion

This thesis describes the theory, design and implementation of a new class of integrated temperature sensors, based on heat diffusion. In such sensors, temperature is sensed by measuring the time it takes for heat to diffuse through silicon. An on-chip thermal delay can be determined by geometry and the thermal diffusivity of silicon, and since...

Quantification of the atomic hydrogen flux as a function of filament temperature and H2 flow rate

An isothermal sensor is developed to quantify the atomic hydrogen flux on a surface, which can be located at any distance from the molecular hydrogen cracking unit. This flux is determined from the measured heat effect due to recombination of atomic hydrogen at the sensor surface. The temperature of the sensor was kept constant at 350°C to keep...

A Temperature-to-Digital Converter Based on an Optimized Electrothermal Filter

This paper describes the design of a CMOS temperature-to-digital converter (TDC). It operates by measuring the temperature-dependent phase shift of an electrothermal filter (ETF). Compared to previous work, this TDC employs an ETF whose layout has been optimized to minimize the thermal phase spread caused by lithographic inaccuracy. To minimize...