A leading worldwide manufacturer of high performance sensor and analog solutions, ams AG, has signed an agreement to acquire 100% of the shares in Cambridge CMOS Sensors Ltd (CCMOSS), a spin-off company from Cambridge University including intellectual property licensed from the University of Warwick.

CCMOSS was born from a collaboration between Warwick’s Professor Julian Gardner and Cambridge founders Professor Bill Milne and Professor Florin Udrea (pictured l-r), with the start of technology development dating back to 1994. CCMOSS has built an outstanding expertise in micro hotplate design and manufacturing for gas and infrared sensing over more than 20 years.

Professor Gardner, who was Chief Scientific Officer at CCMOSS, said: "Working with ams is a fantastic opportunity that will enable the CCMOSS technology in gas and infra-red sensing to become truly global."

Professor Gardner is Head of the Microsensors & Bioelectronics Research Laboratory (formerly Sensors Research Laboratory) and Leader of the Electrical & Electronic Engineering Stream in the School of Engineering. His research interests are microsensors, microsystems technology, electronic noses, intelligent sensors and multivariate data processing methods. He has published over 500 technical papers and is an author of eight books and 20 patents. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2006 and won the IET JJ Thompson Medal for Achievements in Electronics in 2007. In the last five years he has won several national innovation awards with Cambridge CMOS Sensors Ltd as first Technical Director and then more recently Chief Scientist.

Pictured: World's smallest MEMS based gas sensor