When you're in a meeting room with a headache, a fever, and a severe drowsiness, your first instinct is to think it's a fever or a cold.The carbon dioxide trapped in the indoor air may be the culprit.

Generally speaking, human body will show different physiological reactions under different CO2 concentrations, such as:

1. 250-350ppm (CO2 concentration) belongs to the outdoor environment with normal air quality;

2. 350-1000ppm, well-ventilated indoor environment;

3, 1000-2000ppm, bad air, people will easily sleepy;

4. 2000-5000ppm will cause headaches, drowsiness, decreased concentration, accelerated heartbeat, nausea and other adverse reactions;

5. >5000PPM, causing permanent brain damage, fainting and even death.

This is why most indoor environments need to be equipped with carbon dioxide environmental sensing equipment is an important reason.Today, new fans and smart ventilation systems in modern business and residential areas often use carbon dioxide sensors to regulate ventilation in the most energy-efficient and body-friendly way.With the significant reduction of the cost and volume of CO2 sensors, more and more application scenarios have formed a strong demand for CO2 sensors.Li jinhua, general manager of sheng sirui trading (shenzhen) co., LTD., said, 'in addition to ventilation systems, we are also seeing more and more use of carbon dioxide sensors in fields like home air conditioners and temperature controllers.Especially for small, low price, high performance sensors, can be extended to more applications, the market will grow.'

China's market for environmental sensors has exploded

The market demand for environmental sensors in China has always been considerable, especially when environmental sensors are gradually becoming smaller, cost-effective and widely covered (high, low and high levels can be covered), they will attract more market attention.Take temperature and humidity sensors as an example. 'it's like building a refrigerator. Ten years ago, there were very few temperature and humidity sensors on the market.But now that there may be millions or even tens of millions of refrigerators with temperature and humidity sensors on the market, that's an amazing growth rate.The same is true for air conditioners. Many air conditioners did not use temperature and humidity sensors in the past, but now more and more air conditioners start to use temperature and humidity sensors, and this trend is more and more obvious now.'

The key to this trend is the increasing cost performance and coverage capabilities of our sensors. 'the price of our products has been falling,' says Dr. Michel Stromereder, director of sos-sensor's product management team.Because we hope to let customers apply this product to more devices. If the price is lower, we can cover the application of high-end, mid-end and low-end products.We are very competitive in price. We are willing to do this market together with our customers, and we are willing to make products with the highest cost performance. That is why we have maintained a high growth rate.'

This ability of high cost performance and wide coverage is mainly due to sze rui's strong control of sensor technology and value chain.As an expert in the field of environmental sensors, Michel sees two points to his success: 'first, we used to see the price of temperature and humidity sensors go down all the time.Second, when the cost is getting lower and lower, we can offer more cost-effective products. This is because we have our own factory in Switzerland, and we can control the whole value chain ourselves, so we can have a great impact on the value chain.From the company's point of view, we've been healthy, and we've been shifting some of our productivity to China.Also, the year before last we bought a company with factories in South Korea and Shanghai, so there will be some high-density supply of modules in China.'

Why not use NDIR for micro sensors?

The SCD40 is the first micro carbon dioxide and humidity sensor with a volume of only 1 cubic centimeter, and it is five times smaller than the previous generation SCD30.In addition, the sensor integrates ssi's first class temperature and humidity sensors to achieve two additional sensor outputs.Based on the principle of photoacoustic sensing, this revolutionary product combines small size and high performance, opening up more possibilities for many new integration modes and application scenarios.Moreover, due to its unprecedented high cost performance, it is particularly suitable for high-volume and cost-sensitive applications.

Why photoacoustic sensing principle and not NDIR?'NDIR is not the same as photoacoustic,' Michel explained. 'NDIR is simply a light source, a detector.If there is any deviation between the light source and the detector, the signal cannot hit the detector, and there may be some deviation.But the photoacoustic principle we're talking about is very simple. It has a light source, and when it vibrates, there's a sound going to the microphone, so the sensor doesn't get affected by other gases or other things in the process, so it works better.'

With the help of the principle of photoacoustic sensing, the size of the optical resonance cavity of SCD40 can be greatly reduced without affecting the sensor performance.This does not mean that NDIR technology is not good enough, Michel added: 'we are good at NDIR, it is not that NDIR is bad, but we know its disadvantages and how to correct them, so as to give customers better products. This is very important.NDIR is a rapidly maturing technology, but it has its drawbacks, some of which fail to meet the requirements of the end customer.So, in order to meet the requirements of the customer, we have to use photoacoustic technology to achieve.'

Although at present, in the target market and non-target market, it is not possible to see the advantages of sensor application using the principle of photoacoustic sensing.But sze said more tests will be done in the future to collect more data to support this.

How do Swiss companies cope with local competition?

Environmental sensor is one of the technical fields that sze rui is most good at. However, there are many players with local market and channel competitive advantages in this field in China. Will this affect the development of sze rui as a Swiss company in China?What will Mr. Sheng do to compete with these local companies?

'I think there are two things,' Mr. Lee said. 'one is that we spend a large percentage of our revenue on research and development every year, which ensures that our products are one or two steps ahead of our competitors almost every time we bring them to market.'Therefore, our investment in technology can ensure that we have a very advanced leading position in technology.Second, we now have a strong team in China, including factories and research and development.If customers in the Chinese market have specific needs, we can quickly integrate our global resources according to customer needs. Although we are not a local company in China, we have advantages.

Also, li thinks having lots of competitors isn't necessarily a bad thing.'personally, I think this market is very big, and we need to work with similar companies in China to make this pie,' he said. 'we can't just rely on us to push it forward.Of course, we want to be ahead of the curve, so we will continue to launch new and great products to give back to the market and customers.

The SCD40 is a case in point, and miniaturization is one of the key features.The product, which will be launched in the first half of 2020, is also one of the cheapest in the field of carbon dioxide sensors, costing only a few dollars.This unprecedented cost performance opens up new possibilities for more high-volume and cost-sensitive applications.

summary

Environmental sensor technology is sze rui's strong point. This time, the carbon dioxide sensor is highly integrated and reduced in size by 5-6 times, which is enough to demonstrate sz rui's control power in the technical end and its determination to promote the large-scale popularization of this kind of sensor.

The construction of smart and healthy cities in the future obviously needs more environmental sensor technology experts like sheng sirui.After all, this is not a catch-all market, with a wide range of applications such as appliances, buildings, factories, automobiles and other fields requiring real-time monitoring of carbon dioxide and temperature and humidity sensors.However, the future competition is bound to be small, cost-effective and broad coverage of the world.First-mover advantage means a lot to a company, and sze rui has already done that, which is sure to give the company more initiative in the increasingly competitive market for environmental sensors in the coming years.