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M. Piotto, F. Dell'Agnello, S. Del Cesta, M. Bruschi, "Integrated Thermal Flow Sensors with Programmable Power-Sensitivity Trade-Off" Cogresso Nazionale Sensori (CNS), 2016

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A thermal flow sensor integrated with a programmable electronic interface into the same chip is proposed. The sensing structure is a micro-calorimeter with a double heater configuration fabricated with a simple post-processing technique applied to chip designed with a commercial CMOS process. The electronic interface is based on a low-noise, low-power instrumentation amplifier and a configurable heater current driver. The device characterization in nitrogen confirms the possibility to manage the trade-off between the sensitivity and the power delivered to the device by means of the programmable interface.