Gas sensing has become indispensable in many industrial, medical, and environmental applications, and it plays a growing and critical role in applications such as refrigerant leakage detection, and greenhouse gas (GHG) monitoring which are central to the European Green Deal. Among existing approaches, Non-dispersive Infrared (NDIR) sensing stands out as one of the most promising gas sensing technologies, offering high accuracy, reliability, and durability. However, current state-of-the-art NDIR gas sensors are bulky, costly, and difficult to integrate, limiting their widespread deployment in emerging high-volume markets.
In TITAN we will overcome these limitations by developing system-on-chip (SoC) integrated silicon photonic waveguide based gas sensors, enabling the transition from discrete optical assemblies to wafer-scale fabricated gas sensors. Building on the achievements of earlier EU-funded research, in TITAN we focus on several innovations: (i) extension of the SoC photonic gas sensor for sensing multiple GHGs and refrigerants; (ii) simplifications of the sensor design to enable high-yield wafer-scale manufacturing; (iii) integration of a novel graphene-based mid-IR emitter for enhanced performance; and (iv) functional wafer-level packaging for protection and gas access.
We will develop gas sensor systems for target gases including CO₂, CH₄, and refrigerants (e.g., R-290, R-744) as they are potent GHGs and they are essential to several commercially attractive use cases. By uniting semiconductor sensor mass fabrication with advanced graphene integration, TITAN will contribute to Europe’s leadership in next-generation sensing technologies, delivering market-ready, scalable, and sustainable gas sensing solutions essential for climate-neutral goals and enabling new applications in IoT, environmental monitoring, and industrial safety.