Managing Indoor Air Quality with Infineon XENSIV™ PAS CO2 Sensor in the Pandemic Era

Today, people spend almost all of their time indoors in "enclosed spaces" such as buildings, automobiles, trains, and airplanes.

Recent research shows that indoor air quality is up to 5 times worse than outdoor air quality, and in particular, when CO₂ levels indoors rise, headaches, fatigue, and reduced concentration occur, directly affecting health and work performance.

By utilizing a CO₂ sensor, it is possible to manage carbon dioxide levels and control indoor air quality, as well as detect the concentration of viruses that are difficult to sense and spread through air, such as COVID-19.

CO₂ sensors can be applied to ventilation control systems, air purifiers, thermostats, and weather stations, as well as building automation devices and IoT devices such as smart speakers.
 
Conventional CO₂ sensors are broadly divided into NDIR (non-dispersive infrared) sensors and eCO₂ sensor types. NDIR sensors are relatively large in size and expensive, making it difficult to apply them to small IoT devices or smart home devices, and eCO₂ sensors have the disadvantage of significantly reduced accuracy, as they calculate corresponding CO₂ concentration values using algorithms instead of directly measuring CO₂ concentration.

To overcome these limitations, Infineon has developed a new CO₂ sensor based on photoacoustic spectroscopy (PAS) leveraging MEMS technology expertise.

The operating principle of the PAS sensor is as follows. Light pulses emitted from an infrared light source within the measurement chamber pass through an optical filter tuned to the CO₂ absorption wavelength of λ = 4.2 μm, and CO₂ molecules inside the measurement chamber absorb the filtered light and vibrate the molecules. The sensor detects pressure changes generated by CO₂ molecules within the cavity, and a microcontroller converts this output into a CO₂ concentration measurement value and calculates it.
 
In this webinar, we will introduce the impact of CO₂ in real-life environments and applications utilizing CO₂ sensors, and examine Infineon's newly launched XENSIV™ PAS CO2 sensor.

We encourage you to attend the webinar to learn how to detect potential air quality issues and improve air quality using Infineon's XENSIV™ PAS CO2 sensor.