A portable micro gas chromatography system for lung cancer associated volatile organic compound detection

With the help of micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) and complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology, a portable micro gas chromatography (μGC) system for lung cancer associated volatile organic compounds (VOCs) detection is realized for the first time. The system is composed of an MEMS preconcentrator, an MEMS separation column, and a CMOS system-on-chip (SoC). The preconcentrator provides a concentration ratio of 2170. The separation column can separate more than seven types of lung cancer associated VOCs. The SoC is fabricated by a TSMC 0.35 μm 2P4M process including the CMOS VOCs detector, sensor calibration circuit, low-noise chopper instrumentation amplifier (IA), 10 bit analog to digital converter, and the microcontrol unit (MCU). Experimental results show that the system is able to detect seven types of lung cancer associated VOCs (acetone, 2-butanone, benzene, heptane, toluene, m-xylene, 1,3,5-trimethylbenzene). The concentration linearity is R² = 0.985 and the detection sensitivity is up to 15 ppb with 1,3,5-trimethylbenzene.