Challenging environments tolerant smart systems for IoT (CHARM)

Digitalization has been identified as one of the key enablers for renewal and competitiveness of European manufacturing industries. However, grasping the digitalization and IoT-related opportunities can be limited by the harsh environmental conditions of the manufacturing processes and end-use environments. The ECSEL-IA 2019 project initiative CHARM aims to contribute to solving this problem by developing ECS technologies that tolerate harsh industrial environments. The project concept centres around real industrial challenges from different types of end-use industries. The synergies and impacts arise from similarities in technology solutions serving different applications and industry sectors.

TUD contribution will be in the development of a temperature sensor for high-temperature radiative applications. The usual MEMS technology is likely to malfunction in harsh environment applications because of the degradation of the sensor’s structural materials and/or the failure of its sensing mechanism. While the former shortcoming can be addressed by using stronger materials, the latter one asks for the development of sensing mechanisms that can operate in harsh environments with acceptable precision and speed. Using wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductors and considering cross-interference are the solutions will be considered in this project to tackle the challenges regarding the previous experience of ECTM group on SiC-based sensors.