Chemical sensors with integrated electronics

The integration of chemical sensors with integrated electronics present some challenges. For one, integrated circuits are generally packaged in such a way as to protect the circuit from any liquid and from humidity, but liquid chemical sensor chips must be in contact with the solution under test. Nevertheless, their integration yields improvements in system signal-to-noise ratio by buffering and converting signals close to the transducers. It is also to batch-fabricated the sensing systems rather than just sensors. Multiple and complex analyses can be performed by precise on-chip control circuits. If fully developed, the integration of circuits with chemical sensors can be bring advances in the field of sensing and lead to true systems-on-chips. This can be realized by integrating more circuits including not only signal processing circuits for data readout and conversion as well as for microcontrollers, digital signal processing circuits, memory and circuits for wired or wireless communications.