According to mamus consulting, aroma bit, an innovative developer of odor sensors in Japan, has set up a new subsidiary company to develop the next generation of odor sensors on silicon-based CMOS sensor substrate, which has the advantages of ultra compact, high resolution and low cost. Its technology is realized by combining the odor sensor receiving membrane technology developed by aroma bit with the ultra sensitive silicon-based CMOS ion imaging sensor technology developed by Toyohashi University of technology and related enterprises.
The odor sensor can be embedded in the smart phone, and the super-high resolution equivalent to the dog nose can be realized on the chip of 1 mm2
Aroma bit has developed and is selling a compact odor sensor with quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) sensor substrate, which shows ultra-high sensitivity in the sensor market. However, it is challenging to further reduce the size and cost of traditional QCM odor sensors to meet the needs of large-scale applications such as smart phones.
The newly developed silicon-based CMOS odor sensor can realize ultra compact, high odor resolution and low cost, and can be embedded in smart phones and other Internet of things devices. For example, a 1mm2 chip with a new sensor substrate can achieve a resolution equivalent to that of a dog nose (about 1200 receptors).
With this new sensor substrate technology, aroma bit now has two technology combinations: (1) traditional ultra-high sensitivity QCM sensor substrate technology, and (2) ultra-high resolution, ultra compact, low-cost silicon-based CMOS sensor substrate technology. The combination of the two technologies provides a highly competitive combination of sensor technologies for aroma bit, which has two key performance of odor sensor: sensor sensitivity and odor resolution. Therefore, the addition of new sensors is expected to further enhance the competitive advantage of aroma bit in the field of compact odor sensors.
Aroma bit transforms odor detection into a visual model
At present, aroma bit is further accelerating the development of its digital odor database, or odor big data based on its hardware competitive advantage. Through the combination of sensor hardware and odor database, aroma bit ensures its leading position in the growing digital olfactory market, so as to realize its vision of "visualizing odor through odor imaging technology and realizing a better world".
Aroma bit silicon sensor technology (hereinafter referred to as "absst"), a newly developed subsidiary of aroma bit, is the first officially recognized university start-up company of Fengqiao University of technology and science.
Although University start-up companies are rising in Japan, there are only a few successful cases of industrialization due to the conflict of intellectual property rights between the interests of large companies, the mismatch between researchers and entrepreneurs and other factors.
In this specific case of industry university cooperation, it is expected to improve the success opportunities of the technology by assigning absst to promote the commercialization of the technology jointly developed with the University.
background
Aroma bit has successfully developed the next generation of high compact and high-resolution odor sensor on silicon-based CMOS substrate by applying its developed odor sensor receiving membrane technology to the super sensitive silicon-based CMOS ion imaging sensor technology developed by Professor Kazuaki Sawada of Fengqiao University of technology and science.
In 2017, Fengqiao University of technology and science, Toyohashi sensor kyogikai company, Hamamatsu photonics, Toho technology, Nippon chemi con and aroma bit jointly formed the consortium COSCO.
In order to summarize the results of COSCO alliance and further accelerate the development and industrialization, absst was established as a subsidiary of aroma bit.
Looking forward to the future, absst will be committed to the development of silicon-based CMOS next generation odor sensor, which has the advantages of ultra-high resolution, ultra compact and low cost, and can be embedded in smart phones and various Internet of things devices.