Gas Sensor Patents: Leaders, Trends & White Space 2026
- Filing has cooled since its 2019 peak. 56 families filed that year against 27 in 2017 and just 27 at the 2022 midpoint — the growth phase behind this field is over, not ahead of it.
- G01N dominates the claim map. 590 of 680 records sit in material analysis and testing (G01N), versus 52 in semiconductor devices and 46 in non-metallic inorganic compounds — sensing chemistry, not device integration, is where the claim density lives.
- The US is the primary filing venue by a wide margin. 260 records were filed at the USPTO against 79 at the EPO and 58 in Japan, so freedom-to-operate work has to start with US prior art.
Filing growth compares 2021 (29 records) with 2024 (35) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 680 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the gas sensor patent record actually covers
Gas sensor patents in this dataset cluster around two things: the sensing material itself — metal oxide layers, chemiresistive films, selective coatings — and the device architecture that reads them. The search string pulls in 680 patent families published between 2015 and 2026, spanning material science, semiconductor fabrication and, to a smaller degree, battery and fuel-cell adjacent chemistry. The IPC spread shows a field anchored in material analysis and testing rather than in packaging or circuit design, which tells a filer where the crowded ground actually is before they draft a single claim.
Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the 2025 and 2026 counts in any trend line understate real activity — treat the last two data points as a floor, not a ceiling.
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Filing trend and technology mix
Two views of the same 680 families: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which technical subclasses carry the claim density.
A field past its filing peak
Filings ran from 27 in 2017 to a peak of 56 in 2019, settled to 27 by the 2022 midpoint, and stand at 4 in the most recent partial year. That trajectory reads as flat-to-declining rather than an emerging technology still ramping up.
Sensing chemistry outweighs device integration
G01N (material analysis and testing) accounts for 590 of 680 records — by far the dominant subclass. H01L (semiconductor devices, 52), C01B and C01G (inorganic compound chemistry, 46 and 40) and B82Y (nanotechnology, 35) trail well behind, showing that the contested ground is sensing material formulation, not the surrounding electronics.
Shares are the percentage of the 680 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Gas Sensor Gas Sensor with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about gas sensor gas sensor and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited records anchoring this space
Highly sensitive and selective gas sensing material to methylbenzene (US20170350871A1)
A gas sensing material built on a nanocomposite of Cr2O3 and ZnCr2O4, with chromium content tuned between 67.0 and 90.0 atomic percent relative to the Cr-plus-Zn total. The composition is claimed for high selectivity and sensitivity to methylbenzenes over other gases, alongside a low-temperature preparation method that controls composition and enables rapid synthesis.Filed by Korea University Research and Business Foundation, published 2017-12-07.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6503831B2 | Method of forming an electronic device | 680 |
| 2 | US20020105080A1 | Method of forming an electronic device | 350 |
| 3 | US6713389B2 | Method of forming an electronic device | 255 |
| 4 | US20030076649A1 | Method of forming an electronic device | 181 |
| 5 | WO1999019900A2 | Method of forming an electronic device | 171 |
| 6 | US5605612A | Gas sensor and manufacturing method of the same | 133 |
| 7 | US4847783A | Gas sensing instrument | 132 |
| 8 | US7129166B2 | Method of forming an electronic device | 131 |
| 9 | US20040151014A1 | Method of forming an electronic device | 112 |
| 10 | US20070087564A1 | Method of forming an electronic device | 109 |
Citation counts reflect influence within the searched corpus and skew toward older filings — read them as a signal of foundational status, not current relevance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three read-outs from the trend and technology data that matter more than the raw counts on their own.
The growth phase has already happened
Volume peaked in 2019 and has trended down through the 2022 midpoint. Even discounting the last two years for publication lag, this is not a field accelerating into a new wave of filings — it is one that has largely settled its claim map.
Material formulation is the crowded subclass
Almost 87% of records sit in material analysis and testing. Device-side subclasses like H01L and H10P carry a fraction of that density, which means integration and packaging claims face less prior art than sensing-material composition claims do.
US filings set the freedom-to-operate baseline
With 260 of the tracked records filed at the USPTO, any clearance search that skips US prior art is working with a incomplete picture. EPO and Japan follow at a considerable distance, and China and India trail further still.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to gas sensor gas sensor, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the claim space, and where momentum has stalled
Co-assignee activity is sparse — only 4 pairs recorded, all anchored to a single UK gas entity — and recent-year momentum across tracked assignees shows zero filings in the latest year across the board. That combination points to a field where the founding claims were staked years ago and current activity has slowed rather than shifted to new leaders.
Collaboration is rare, not the norm
The strongest co-filing links all involve the same UK gas entity paired with individual named inventors, each appearing once. This is a field where assignees largely file solo rather than through joint ventures or research consortia.
No single firm is currently accelerating
Every assignee surfaced in recent-year momentum tracking shows zero filings in the latest year, several down 100% year over year. That is consistent with the broader filing trend: this is a maturing claim landscape, not one with an active new entrant pushing volume.
University and foundation filings sit alongside corporate ones
The representative filing in this dataset comes from a university research and business foundation rather than a corporate lab, a reminder that academic assignees hold meaningful sensing-material claims here alongside industrial players.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Leiden Co., Ltd. | 0 | -100% |
| General Electric Company | 0 | — |
| LG Innotek Co., Ltd. | 0 | — |
| AMS Sensors UK Limited | 0 | — |
| InvenSense, Inc. | 0 | — |
| Sensirion AG | 0 | — |
| Korea University Research and Business Foundation | 0 | — |
| British Gas plc | 0 | — |
Turning this landscape into a filing or clearance decision
The trend and assignee data narrow down where to look next; the next step is usually a targeted claim-level review rather than another broad search.
Map claims against the G01N cluster before drafting
With 87% of records in material analysis and testing, a new sensing-material filing needs a claim-by-claim comparison against that subclass specifically, not the dataset as a whole.
Explore claim mapping in EurekaCheck the under-claimed branches for a faster path
Fuel-cell-adjacent and nanostructured-coating sub-areas carry lower filing density and may offer clearer claim scope for a new entrant.
Run a white space search in EurekaCommon questions on gas sensor patents
The assignee landscape here is fragmented rather than dominated by one clear leader, with a mix of corporate labs, component makers and university research foundations holding meaningful families. Recent-year momentum data shows every tracked top assignee at zero filings in the latest year, which means current leadership is really about who staked the widest claims earlier rather than who is filing the most today. Anyone doing competitive tracking should weight cumulative family counts over single-year filing counts for this reason.
Filing activity peaked in 2019 at 56 families and has declined toward 27 by 2022, with only 4 recorded in the most recent partial year. Because publication lags filing by around 18 months, the last one to two years will always look artificially low, but even accounting for that lag the multi-year trend from 2019 onward is downward, not upward. This points to a field consolidating around established claims rather than one still in an expansion phase.
Material analysis and testing, IPC subclass G01N, accounts for 590 of the 680 tracked families — by a wide margin the largest technical cluster. Semiconductor device integration (H01L), inorganic compound chemistry (C01B and C01G) and nanotechnology applications (B82Y) each carry a much smaller share. Practically, this means the sensing material itself — composition, selectivity, preparation method — is where the prior art is thickest, while device packaging and circuit integration carry comparatively less claim density.
The United States leads with 260 of the tracked records, followed by the European Patent Office at 79, Japan at 58, WIPO/PCT filings at 57, China at 52 and India at 45. This distribution means a freedom-to-operate review for a US-market product needs to start with US prior art, but a global launch strategy still needs to check EPO and Japanese filings given their substantial secondary share.
This filing from Korea University Research and Business Foundation claims a gas sensing material built on a Cr2O3 and ZnCr2O4 nanocomposite, with chromium content specified between 67.0 and 90.0 atomic percent, targeted at selective methylbenzene detection, along with its low-temperature preparation method. It blocks direct use of that specific compositional range and preparation approach for methylbenzene sensing, but it does not cover other target gases, other oxide chemistries, or sensing materials outside that atomic percentage window. A new filer working on a different metal oxide system or a different target analyte would not need to design around this claim specifically, though they should still check it against the broader G01N cluster.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.