This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project continues the development of a new class of wireless miniature smart sensor labels that continuously track and record exposure to the environmental conditions, and directly store the sensed data in digital CMOS non volatile memory (NVM) without requiring any battery. These CMOS-sensor chips are able to track temperature (-50°C to 70°C), humidity (5% to 100% RH), and shock/impact (50g to 250g), in a total volume of less than 1.5mm x 1.5mm x 0.7mm. The CMOS-sensor chip can be embedded in a standard passive radio frequency identification (RFID) inlay to form a fully integrated multi-sensor environmental condition tracking wireless device that is able to be deployed in a scalable RFID network. A multi-faceted innovative approach in MEMS devices and digital non-volatile memories enables the proposed CMOS-sensor chip. The temperature and humidity sensors fabricated and micropackage processes developed in Phase-I successfully demonstrate the technical feasibility and commercial viability of the proposed wireless smart sensor labels. The outcome of the proposed effort meets the form factor, functionality, and price-point requirements of embedded and widely-dispersed sensing, in a broad range of applications.
The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is on several existing industries, larger and more significant impacts on new markets and industries to be formed around this innovative and powerful technical ability. We believe that the existing live/bio material delivery segment can generate up to $500 million yearly sales for Evigia based on our technology directly reducing up to $1.4 billion of vaccine potency destruction each year, and saving up to $150 million yearly of blood plasma being destroyed during transportation. Commercial delivery logistics of sensitive/high-value goods and fresh produce is another large existing market where we can bring direct benefit up to $5 billion yearly in the US based on our smaller, lower cost, batteryless solution being included to monitor shipping quality in a far larger fraction of all packages being shipped in the US. The underlying technology of the proposed effort could be also potentiality employed in development of a broader family of advanced systems including improved diagnosis and treatment of mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) which affects millions of Americans annually through sports and other accidental injuries.
This NSF Phase II SBIR project results in the development of a new class of wireless miniature smart sensor chips and labels that can continuously track and record exposure to the environmental conditions such as mechanical impact, temperature, and humidity and store the results directly into digital memory without requiring any battery. These sensor chips and labels meet the form factor, functionality, and price-point requirements of embedded and widely-dispersed wireless sensing for a broad range of applications including sports injury monitoring, infrastructure monitoring, supply chain management of perishables and sensitive goods. For instance, these sensor chips can measure head acceleration caused by an impact to a helmet in sports, such as football, ice hockey, bike riding, and alpine sky. The sensors alert a potential mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) immediately, to be responded by exhaustive medical examination and tests in the hospital. Or, in another application, these sensors can ensure the efficacy of vaccines from the point of manufacturing to the point of use by providing alarm if the storage and transportation temperature of the vaccines have been below or above the safe levels, while cost savings in shipping and supply management generated and passed to the end users. The enabling technology innovation of this project is in forming ultra-low power non-volatile digital memory that can directly record the sense parameters with over 10,000x improved energy efficiency compared with conventional digital non-volatile memory such as flash memory. The sensor array elements extract some of the energy for their operation directly from the change in the sensed parameter such as temperature change, humidity absorption, and mechanical impact. This dramatically reduces electrical energy requirements for sensor operation enabling battery less operation. The multiple-sensor arrays are fabricated using MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems) and semiconductor manufacturing process resulting in low-cost miniature mass produced sensor chips operating wirelessly. The sensor chips developed in this project are able to track temperature (-50C to 70C), humidity (5% to 100% RH), and shock/impact (50g to 250g), in the size of 3mm x 3mm x 1mm (volume smaller than an apple seed). These sensor chips can be embedded in standard passive radio frequency identification (RFID) inlay to form a fully integrated multi-sensor environmental condition tracking wireless device The sensor chips and smart labels developed in this project provide the functionality, performance, price points and form-factors that are demanded in large existing markets such as live/bio material delivery and vaccines, and commercial delivery logistics of sensitive/high-value goods and fresh produce. Moreover, the proposed sensor technology opens up the ability to physically distribute low cost and form factor, batteryless wireless sensors, and create new markets including infrastructure monitoring and personal safety. We believe advanced miniature light-weight wireless sensors developed under this project will be used in improved diagnosis and treatment of mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) in sports which affects millions of people annually in US and around the world. A low-cost system with just acceleration/impact sensors could be placed into a helmet for monitoring head injury. Due to the low cost of the system, their pervasive deployment could be achieved improving the safety by early mild Traumatic Brain Injury diagnosis and treatment. The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control reports that traumatic brain injury is reported by 1.4 million people in the United States annually. Of these, 3.6% die, 16.8% are hospitalized and the rest are treated and released. In additions, these systems will assist the medical research and scientific community to gather accurate field data required for building the brain injury predictive models based on the head impact or acceleration severity. The current available alternative sensor systems for gathering such information lack the required accuracy and are costly.
