This PFI: AIR Research Alliance project focuses on the translation and transfer of multi-gas sensing technologies derived from the Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center expertise and discoveries in microfabricated chemical-sensitive field effect transistors (CS-FETs). The CS-FET is important because it enables new miniature, low power, low cost devices for much broader deployments of wireless emergency leak detection & alarm systems to make the oil & gas industry more safe, and eventual integration into mobile consumer devices to allow rapid detection of environmental hazards for the mass market. The technology provides ultra-miniaturization and power reduction sufficient for microbattery-powered wireless gas monitoring. Sensing capabilities will facilitate industrial and consumer safety and health applications. The features will provide compelling commercial advantages in mobility, multiple gas targeting, and suitability for wireless sensor network integration when compared to the leading competing handheld gas sensors available in this market space. Educational benefits will accrue to university of California Graduate student researchers who gain entrepreneurial and technology translation experience through close collaboration with industrial sponsors in more phases of research commercialization than are currently observed in arms-length industry sponsored university research projects.
This project addresses several technology gaps in translation from research discovery to commercial application. The batch fabricated gas sensor itself utilizes economic semiconductor processes to create a novel low cost, low power transistor that can be chemically functionalized to multiple gas species on a single substrate. The program will additionally support aggressive miniaturization of ultra low-power wireless communications platforms built on new wireless network standards (such as Wireless HART) established for applications such as this. The boundary spanning marriage of university research-driven sensing and communications technology with industry technologists targeting real world problems will validate the innovation ecosystem that is the subject of this program.
The innovation ecosystem that will be created includes oil & gas industry leader Chevron Corporation who provides application & operations knowledge and brings unmet product needs to the ecosystem as eventual customer/end user; Murata Manufacturing Corporation, a multinational leader in electronic & wireless components and subsystems; Rosemount, a business unit of Emerson, a market leader in industrial automation and major supplier to Oil & Gas and other targeted industries; and NanoShift, a microfabrication contracting and consulting company with presence inside the University recharge laboratories where the CS-FET is being developed. The economic impact is expected to be development and manufacturing jobs as well as employment of high technology systems and field service personnel. Some of these impacts will begin to be realized in the 5-year timeframe because of the active collaborative co-development ecosystem that will reduce discovery-to-commercial timeframes. The scale of investment in clean air technologies is illustrated in current Chevron forecasts of up to 1,000 jobs to implement a single facility technology modernization project at their Richmond, California refinery (just one of 143 U.S. commercial oil & gas refineries) some of which is undertaken for emissions reduction.
