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The measurement of carbon dioxide in medical application is well established for a long time. Medical key parameters such as the end tidal CO 2 concentration are well known and very useful in day-to-day clinical work. It is a non-invasive method for monitoring the patient's pulmonary function in emergency or intensive care as well as in anesthesia. The combination of a respiratory CO 2 -measurement with a volumetric breathing measurement enables the detection of the minute volume of CO 2 . This is an important parameter in respiratory medicine. The combination with an additional respiratory oxygen measurement is used for indirect calorimetry and enables the characterization of the metabolism. Such measurement methods are used in a wide range of applications, for instance in medicine, home car as well as in sports medicine. Although capnometers are state of the art for a long time and well developed, this paper shows a new design approach to improve sensor parameters such as power consumption, start-up-time, measurement time and robustness. Prototype sensors are realized for main- and side-stream application. CO 2 -measurements of the newly developed sensors are presented in comparison with results of commercial devices.