Low-power micro-scale CMOS-compatible silicon sensor on a suspended membrane.

In this paper we describe a new, simple and cheap silicon device operating at high temperature at a very low power of a few mW. The essential part of the device is a nano-size conductive link 10-100 nm in size (the so-called antifuse) formed in between two poly-silicon electrodes separated by a thin SiO2 layer. The device can be utilized in chemical sensors or chemical micro-reactors requiring high temperature and very low power consumption e.g. in portable, battery operated systems. As a direct application, we mention a gas sensor (i.e. Pellistor) for hydrocarbons (butane, methane, propane, etc.) based on temperature changes due to the catalytic combustion of hydrocarbons. The power consumed by our device is at about 2% of the power consumed by conventional Pellistors.