WIROX · Oxide Nanostructures for Wireless Chemical Sensing

Wireless sensor nodes (the so called ”Smart Dust”) are autonomous devices incorporating sensing, power, computation, and communication into one system. The incorporation of electrical gas sensors in motes is a scientific challenge which has not been solved yet. The objective of the project is to build up an international partnership to tackle these scientific challenge developing self-powered autonomous nano-scale chemical sensors which harvest energy from the environment. The objective will be pursued by packing together scientists from top level institutions and training young researchers to the twofold task of developing self heated nanowire based chemical sensors and Quantum Dots Solar Cells and integrate the latter for powering the first in a mote. Long lasting collaborations will be developed through exchange of people and realization of different research activities. Primary application will be Energy-efficient Buildings (EeB), which are already some of the largest and most prevalent deployments of “sensor networks” in the world, although they are not typically recognized as such. Wireless gas sensing of air quality could strongly increase the performance of HVAC systems (among NMP 2012 topics).