A 7μW pH-to-digital converter for quality monitoring of perishable products

This paper describes an energy-efficient smart pH sensor intended for use in RFID tags to monitor the quality of perishable products. The sensor is based on an Extended Gate Field-Effect Transistor (EGFET). In a measurement time of 20 ms, it achieves a pH resolution of 0.05 and an accuracy of 0.1 in a pH range from 3 to 10, while consuming only 7 μW. This level of power consumption, which is orders of magnitude lower than the prior art, is achieved by incorporating the EGFET in an ultra-low-power frontend based on a differential source-follower, and digitizing the resulting pH-dependent voltage using an incremental first-order ΔΣ ADC.