Progress with MEMS based UGS (IR/THz)

The sensor community has long been presented with the problem of prioritizing among several competing sensor system variables due to the inability to produce a high confidence, low-cost, reliable, and compact device. Typically a solution for very critical scenarios has been a high-cost scale reduction of larger laboratory based instrumentation. This often produced data on a single parameter that is beyond reproach, however this can also produce a very delicate, bulky, and costly system often requiring a vacuum system of some sort. An alternative approach involves using micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) based sensors. This typically results in low-cost and extremely compact devices that often produce dubious or insufficient data. Our approach integrates multiple orthogonal stimuli within a single chip to produce a MEMS based sensor that has a very high degree of signal confidence. Each individual sensed parameter may not produce very high-confidence data, but the combination of multiple independent parameters significantly improves detection reliability in a small low-cost package. In this work we address the integration of THz to our traditional MEMS based IR sensor elements. Also it is very significant that we can now produce IR images at atmospheric pressures which enables the integration of chemical and biological sensing within the same MEMS array.