Hydrogen Gas Sensing Properties in Air on PdO Thin Films

In the past decade, Pd based thin films have been studied far hydrogen gas sensors due to their high possibility for energy industry and environmental applications. In this work, we report a navel method to fabricate highly sensitive hydrogen gas sensors based on PdO thin films. The films were deposited on Si substrates in Ar and $O_2$ ambient using reactive sputtering system. A semiconductor process has been utilized to fabricate PdO films with t=40nm. We observed the resistance changes of the PdO films with various $H_2$ concentrations. It was found that the electrical properties of the thin films depend on the composition of oxygen. The sensitivity is defined as $S\;=\;(R_0-R)/R{\times}100%$, where R and $R_0$ are the resistances in the presence of exposing the hydrogen gas and air, respectively. The sensitivity of the thin films was found to be as high as about 95%. After exposing to hydrogen gas, we discovered that the nano-sized cracks formed on the surface of the PdO thin films. The nano-cracks formed in deoxidized PdO thin films were known by playing a key role to reduce more than 4 times the response time of absorption. Our results illustrate that the deoxidized PdO thin films can be used as hydrogen sensors.