• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
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• v.55 no.5
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• pp.278-285
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• 2006

A micro hotplate for micro gas sensor was fabricated by MEMS technology. In order to heat up the gas sensing material to a target temperature, a micro hotplate was built on the gas sensor. The sensing material was deposited on the heater and electrodes, and did not contact with the silicon base to minimize the heat loss to the silicon base. The electric power to heat up the gas sensor was measured. The temperature distribution of micro gas sensor was analyzed by a CFD program. The predicted electric power to heat up th sensing material showed a good agreement with the measured data. The design of micro gas sensor could be modified to increase the temperature uniformity and to decrease the electric power consumption by optimizing the layout of micro hotplate and electrodes.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers B
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• v.30 no.6 s.249
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• pp.531-537
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• 2006

A lever type $NO_2$ micro gas sensor was fabricated by MEMS technology. In order to heat up the gas sensing material to a target temperature, a micro heater was built on the gas sensor. The sensing material laid on the heater and electrodes and did not contact with the silicon base to minimize the heat loss to the silicon base. The electric power to heat up the gas sensor to a target temperature was measured. The temperature distribution of micro gas sensor was analyzed by a CFD program. The predicted electric power of micro heater to heat up the sensing material to the target temperature showed a good agreement with the measured data. The design of micro gas sensor could be modified to show more uniform temperature distribution and to consume less electric power by optimizing the layout of micro heater and electrodes.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.76-81
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• 2007

A novel multi-layer type micro gas sensor for $NO_X$ detection was designed and fabricated. Micro platform defined as type II-1 in this article for micro gas sensor was fabricated using the MEMS technology to meet the demanding needs of lower power consumption. Nano composite materials were fabricated with nanosized tin oxide powder and $\underline{m}$ulti-$\underline{w}$all $\underline{c}$arbon $\underline{n}$ano $\underline{t}$ube (MWCNT) to improve sensitivity. We investigated characteristics of fabricated multi-layer type micro gas sensor with $NO_2$ concentration variations at constant 2.2 V. Sensitivity (S) of micro gas sensor were observed to increase from 2.9, to 7.4 and 11.2 as concentrations of $NO_2$ gases increased from 2.4 ppm, to 3.6 ppm and 4.9 ppm. When 2.4 ppm of $NO_2$ gas was applied, response time and recovery time of micro gas sensor were recorded as 101 seconds and 142 seconds, respectively.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.228-233
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• 2007

Core technologies for integrating hydrogen gas sensor were investigated. In this study, the thermally isolated micro-hot-plate with areas of $100{\times}100-260{\times}260{\mu}m^2$ was fabricated by utilizing surface micromachining technique that provides better manufacturing yield than bulk micromachining counterpart. The optimum design of the sensor was peformed by analyzing the thermal profile of the structure obtained from a ANSYS simulator. The 400-nm-thick polysilicon films doped with phosphorus, the 300-nm-thick aluminum films, and the 200-nm-thick $SnO_2$(or ZnO)films were used as the micro-heater material, the temperature sensor material, and the gas sensitive material, respectively. The experimental results show that the developed gas sensors can detect $H_2$ concentration as low as 1 ppm.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.132-136
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• 2004

A flat type $NO_2$ micro gas sensor was fabricated by MEMS technology. In order to heat up gas sensing material such as $WO_3$ to a target temperature, a micro hotplate was built on the gas sensor. The temperature distribution of micro gas sensor was analyzed by a CFD program, FLUENT. The results showed that the temperature of silicon wafer base was almost similar to that of the room temperature, which indicates that the heat generated at the micro hotplate heated up effectively the sensing material and its thermal isolation was kept. The uniformity of temperature on the sensing material can be improved by modifying the shape of micro hotplate.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.317-321
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• 2011

A Micro platform for micro gas sensor consisted of micro heater, insulator, and sensing electrode on 2 ${\mu}m$ thick $SiN_x$ membrane. Three types of micro platforms were designed and fabricated with membrane sizes. Total size of micro platform was 2.6 mm by 2.6 mm. Measured power consumptions were 28 mW, 28 mW, and 32.5 mW for Type 1, Type 2, and Type 3. At this moment, temperatures of membranes on the platforms were $295^{\circ}C$, $297^{\circ}C$, and $296^{\circ}C$, respectively. Fabricated micro platform considered appropriate to apply for low power consumption micro gas sensor. Micro gas sensors were prepared by the sequence that $SnO_2$ nanopowder pastes were dropped on membrane of Type 1 platforms, dried in oven, heat-treated with micro heaters in platforms. One of the micro gas sensors was tested for gas response to 1157 ppm, 578 ppm, and 231 ppm of methane and 1.68 ppm, 0.84 ppm, and 0.42 ppm of $NO_2$.

• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.27-30
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• 2012

This paper proposes a micro gas sensor for measuring $H_2S$ gas. This is based on a $SnO_2$-CuO multi-layer thin film. The sensor has a silicon diaphragm, micro heater, and sensing layers. The micro heater is embedded in the sensing layer in order to increase the temperature to an operating temperature. The $SnO_2$-CuO multi layer film is prepared by the alternating deposition method and thermal oxidation which uses an electron beam evaporator and a thermal furnace. To determine the effect of the number of layers, five sets of films are prepared, each with different number of layers. The sensitivities are measured by applying $H_2S$ gas. It has a concentration of 1 ppm at an operating temperature of $270^{\circ}C$. At the same total thickness, the sensitivity of the sensor with multi sensing layers was improved, compared to the sensor with one sensing layer. The sensitivity of the sensor with five layers to 1 ppm of $H_2S$ gas is approximately 68%. This is approximately 12% more than that of a sensor with one-layer.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.35-40
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• 2008

Low power bridge type micro gas sensors were fabricated by micro machining technology with TMAH (Tetra Methyl Ammonium Hydroxide) solution. The sensing devices with different heater materials such as metal and poly-silicon were obtained using CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) compatible process. The tellurium films as a sensing layer were deposited on the micro machined substrate using shadow silicon mask. The low power micro gas sensors showed high sensitivity to NO with high speed. The pure tellurium film used micro gas sensor showed good sensitivity than transition metal (Pt, Ti) used tellurium film.

• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.13 no.7
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• pp.616-623
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• 2007

A dual micro gas sensor array was fabricated using nano sized $SnO_2$ thin films which had good sensitivities to CO and combustible gases, or $H_2S$ gas for air quality sensors in automobile. The already existed air quality sensor detects oxidizing gases and reducing gases, the air quality sensor(AQS), located near the fresh air inlet detected the harmful gases, the fresh air inlet door/ventilation flap was closed to reduce the amount of pollution entering the vehicle cabin through HVAC(heating, ventilating, and air conditioning) system. In this study, to make $SnO_2$ thin film AQS sensor, thin tin metal layer between 1000 and $2000{\AA}$ thick was oxidized between 600 and $800^{\circ}C$ by thermal oxidation. The gas sensing layers such as $SnO_2$, $SnO_2$(pt) and $SnO_2$(+CuO) were patterned by metal shadow mask for simple fabrication process on the silicon substrate. The micro gas sensors with $SnO_2$(+Pt) and $SnO_2$(CuO) showed good selectivity to CO gas among reducing gases and good sensitivity to $H_2S$ that is main component of bad odor, separately.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.299-303
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• 2013

In this study, a micro gas sensor for $NO_x$ was fabricated using a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) technology and sol-gel process. The membrane and micro heater of the sensor platform were fabricated by a standard MEMS and CMOS technology with minor changes. The sensing electrode and micro heater were designed to have a co-planar structure with a Pt thin film layer. The size of the gas sensor device was about $2mm{\times}2mm$. Indium oxide as a sensing material for the $NO_x$ gas was synthesized by a sol-gel process. The particle size of synthesized $In_2O_3$ was identified as about 50 nm by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM). The maximum gas sensitivity of indium oxide, as measured in terms of the relative resistance ($R_s=R_{gas}/R_{air}$), occurred at $300^{\circ}C$ with a value of 8.0 at 1 ppm $NO_2$ gas. The response and recovery times were within 60 seconds and 2 min, respectively. The sensing properties of the $NO_2$ gas showed good linear behavior with an increase of gas concentration. This study confirms that a MEMS-based gas sensor is a potential candidate as an automobile gas sensor with many advantages: small dimension, high sensitivity, short response time and low power consumption.