Flexible Lightweight CMOS-Enabled Multisensory Platform for Plant Microclimate Monitoring

• Published in: IEEE transactions on electron devices Vol. 65; no. 11; pp. 5038 - 5044
• Main Authors: Khan, Sherjeel M., Shaikh, Sohail F., Qaiser, Nadeem, Hussain, Muhammad Mustafa
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01.11.2018; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Actuators; Bare die; Batteries; Circuit design; CMOS; compact; Data transfer (computers); Environmental monitoring; flexible; Humidity; Integrated circuits; Lightweight; Microclimate; Microcontrollers; Monitoring; plant sensor; Resistance; Signal processing; Substrates; Temperature sensors; Weight reduction
• ISSN: 0018-9383; 1557-9646
• DOI: 10.1109/TED.2018.2872401

We report an ultralightweight flexible sensory platform using bare die CMOS chips having a light, temperature, and humidity sensor on a flexible polymer substrate. An application-specified integrated circuit designed and fabricated in a 0.35-<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\mu \text{m} </tex-math></inline-formula> process is used for signal acquisition, conditioning, and further transfer of data to a bare die microcontroller. The whole platform is powered by a bare die solid-state battery. This extremely lightweight (0.44 g), compact (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">3\times1.5 </tex-math></inline-formula> cm 2 ), flexible, and mostly transparent platform can be unobtrusively placed on a leaf of a plant to monitor microclimate conditions surrounding a plant for accurate plant growth monitoring. The latter is successfully demonstrated by placing the platform on a plant leaf and monitoring changing environmental conditions (light, temperature, and humidity) for a whole day.