Gate pulsed readout of floating gate fet gas sensors

Floating gate FET (FGFET) gas sensors based on work function readout allow using a wide range of materials to be included as sensing materials. Longterm stability of the FGFET signal is influenced by unintended surface conductivity. A novel active operation mode presented in this work uses voltage pulses at the suspended gate to increase baseline stability and selectivity. This transient readout strategy allows differentiation between capacitive, volume-based effects and surface-located response, yielding two physically independent readout signals. Using this readout, the baseline stability as well as the selectivity for e.g. a FGFETbased humidity sensor can be increased significantly for polymeric and porous isolating sensing layers.