The awareness of the society regarding air quality is increasing since air pollution is growing and negative impact of polluted air is more and more understood. With the growing demand for sensor technologies and the potential of semiconductor technologies for this application area the project ESAIRQ targets to further develop essential technologies for gas sensing with research for selective, sensitive and reliable sensors at affordable costs for mass exploitation. The miniaturized sensor technologies developed in this project are key enablers for highly sensitive and selective sensor systems or sensor networks for air quality monitoring. The mobile gas and fine particle sensing technologies will have a significant societal impact in case measures are derived based on the known air quality. Dependent on the measures reduction of mortality rates and healthcare costs in polluted environments can be achieved.

IMA will integrate both the off-the-shelf sensors and the newly developed sensors to the demonstrator of the sensor network in order to bring benefit to the comfort indoor environment within buildings and homes. On the top of that IMA will design an environmental model composed of the suitable innovative sensors supported by the new approach in the building automation, personalized services and applications. The new environmental model aims to the protection of the optimal proportion of the air quality and the energy efficiency.