The Environmental Sensors and Subsystems (ESS) Thrust strives to develop new sensors, actuators, and microinstrumentation for a broad range of physical parameters and chemical species. These devices and sub-systems serve as the information-gathering components of numerous possible wireless microsystems whose small size, accuracy, and low power dissipation will enable their widespread dissemination in applications ranging from environmental quality monitoring, homeland security, industrial process control, and global climate studies, to biomarker monitoring and medical surveillance. Devices being developed include sensors for organic vapors, reactive inorganic gases, dissolved metals, bio-molecules, ionizing radiation, pressure, temperature, humidity, acceleration, and position; microvalves and micropumps for sample capture and transport; and micromachined structures for particulate filtration, diffusive vapor generation, preconcentration, focusing, separation, heating, and cooling.

Motivated by performance requirements associated with the Environmental Monitoring Testbed (EMT), the research within this thrust merges the design and engineering of these enabling technology platforms with fundamental studies of new materials, scaling laws, and physicochemical models to define and extend microsystem performance limits. The work in the ESS Thrust is linked to parallel efforts in other WIMS Center Thrusts on low-power circuit designs for drive, control, and signal processing of EMT devices, electronic and fluidic interconnection and packaging strategies, and two-way RF-MEMS communication subsystems. The centerpiece of the EMT, and a major emphasis of the ESS Thrust, is the WIMS micro gas chromatograph (µGC) development program, which has now emerged as the preeminent effort in gas-phase microanalytical systems in the world, with the potential for far-reaching impacts on the scientific community and society at large. Of the 111 core and associated projects in the ERC, 25 are within the ESS thrust.