Quantum Biomimetic Electronic Nose

Room-temperature IETS using RTDs for olfactory sensing

Guide: Prof. Swaroop Ganguly

Duration: May 2024 - Present

1. Quantum Transport Modeling and Materials Investigation

  • Investigated RT inelastic tunneling spectroscopy and the need for energy filtering through quantum structures
  • Used the Non-equilibrium Green’s Function method to perform 3D elastic and inelastic quantum transport calculations exploiting resonant tunneling diodes to realize room-temperature IETS for detecting odorants
  • Investigating different heterostructures such as GaAs–AlAs and IGZO–SiO₂ for the fabrication of the RTDs
  • Proposed and validating a novel mode-based approach to calculate IETS spectra in a 3D RTD

2. Instrumentation Development

  • Designing a nanoampere analog front-end incorporating low-bias current op-amps, precision instrumentation amplifier, 16-bit ADC, and low-noise bipolar DAC with precision reference for a portable IETS-based e-nose
  • Implementing Raspberry Pi–based data processing, including Tikhonov regularization–based numerical differentiation algorithm to obtain d²I/dV² spectra from measurements in real time without lock-in amplifier