• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
• /
• v.29 no.6
• /
• pp.394-398
• /
• 2020

In this paper, we report the sensing performance of H₂ gas sensors composed of Pd/carbon nanotube (CNT) buckypaper at room temperature. The CNT buckypaper was made using a simple filtration process and subsequently deposited with Pd as the sensing material. The sensitivity of the sensor increased with respect to the gas concentration. To investigate the effect of Pd thickness, Pd layers of different thickness were deposited on the buckypaper, and the response of the sensor was evaluated. The proposed sensor exhibits excellent sensing properties with optimized Pd thickness at room temperature (25℃). Pd nanoparticles significantly impact the sensitivity and selectivity of the sensor because of the spillover effect. In addition, the sensor is highly suitable for bendable and wearable devices owing to its structural flexibility.

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

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
• /
• v.32 no.6
• /
• pp.1865-1872
• /
• 2011

This study investigates the sensitivity of a gas sensor to volatile organic compounds (VOCs) at various operating temperatures and catalysts. Nano-sized powdered $WO_3$ prepared by sol-gel and chemical precipitation methods was mixed with various metal oxides. Next, transition metals (Pt, Ru, Pd, and In) were doped on the surface of the mixture. Metal-$WO_3$ thick films were prepared using the screen-printing method. The physical and chemical properties of the films were studied by SEM/EDS, XRD, and BET techniques. The measured sensitivity to VOCs is defined as the ratio ($R_a/R_g$) of resistance ($R_{air}$) of $WO_3$ film in the air to resistance ($R_{gas}$) of $WO_3$ film in a VOCs test gas. The sensitivity and selectivity of the films were tested with various VOCs such as acetaldehyde, formaldehyde, methyl alcohol, and BTEX. The thick $WO_3$ film containing 1 wt % of Ru and 5 wt % of $SnO_2$ showed the best sensitivity and selectivity to acetaldehyde gas at an operating temperature of 300 $^{\circ}C$.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
• /
• v.25 no.2
• /
• pp.125-128
• /
• 2012

We fabricated the electrolyte-insulator-semiconductor (EIS) devices with various high-k sensing membranes to realize a high quality pH sensor. The sensing properties of each high-k dielectric material were compared with those of conventional $SiO_2$ (O) and $SiO_2/Si_3N_4$ (ON) membranes. As a result, the high-k sensing membranes demonstrated better sensitivity and stability than the O and ON membranes. Especially, the $SiO_2/HfO_2$ (OH) stacked layer showed a high sensitivity and the $SiO_2/Al_2O_3$ (OA) stacked layer exhibited an excellent chemical stability. In conclusion, the high-k sensing membranes are expected to have excellent operating characteristics in terms of sensitivity and chemical stability for the biosensor application.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
• /
• v.42 no.2
• /
• pp.219-230
• /
• 2010

In nuclear power plants (NPPs), periodic sensor calibrations are required to assure that sensors are operating correctly. By checking the sensor's operating status at every fuel outage, faulty sensors may remain undetected for periods of up to 24 months. Moreover, typically, only a few faulty sensors are found to be calibrated. For the safe operation of NPP and the reduction of unnecessary calibration, on-line instrument calibration monitoring is needed. In this study, principal component-based auto-associative support vector regression (PCSVR) using response surface methodology (RSM) is proposed for the sensor signal validation of NPPs. This paper describes the design of a PCSVR-based sensor validation system for a power generation system. RSM is employed to determine the optimal values of SVR hyperparameters and is compared to the genetic algorithm (GA). The proposed PCSVR model is confirmed with the actual plant data of Kori Nuclear Power Plant Unit 3 and is compared with the Auto-Associative support vector regression (AASVR) and the auto-associative neural network (AANN) model. The auto-sensitivity of AASVR is improved by around six times by using a PCA, resulting in good detection of sensor drift. Compared to AANN, accuracy and cross-sensitivity are better while the auto-sensitivity is almost the same. Meanwhile, the proposed RSM for the optimization of the PCSVR algorithm performs even better in terms of accuracy, auto-sensitivity, and averaged maximum error, except in averaged RMS error, and this method is much more time efficient compared to the conventional GA method.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.16 no.4
• /
• pp.683-699
• /
• 2015

Time Domain Reflectometry (TDR) has been extensively applied for various laboratory and field studies. Numerous different TDR probes are currently available for measuring soil moisture content and detecting interfaces (i.e., due to landslides or structural failure). This paper describes the development of an innovative spiral-shaped TDR probe that features much higher sensitivity and resolution in detecting interfaces than existing ones. Finite element method (FEM) simulations were conducted to assist the optimization of sensor design. The influence of factors such as wire interval spacing and wire diameter on the sensitivity of the spiral TDR probe were analyzed. A spiral TDR probe was fabricated based on the results of computer-assisted design. A laboratory experimental program was implemented to evaluate its performance. The results show that the spiral TDR sensor featured excellent performance in accurately detecting thin water level variations with high resolution, to the thickness as small as 0.06 cm. Compared with conventional straight TDR probe, the spiral TDR probe has 8 times the resolution in detecting the water level changes. It also achieved 3 times the sensitivity of straight TDR probe.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.19 no.6
• /
• pp.625-631
• /
• 2017

In the fields of civil engineering and seismology, it is essential to detect and tracking the vibrations, and the fiber Bragg gratings (FBGs) are typically used as sensors to measure vibrations. Where, one of the most popular and detailed approaches to use FBGs as vibration sensors involves the use of cantilever beam designs, which adds a mass to measure low and moderate frequencies (from 20 Hz up to 1 kHz) with high sensitivities (greater than 10 pm/g). The design consists of a bending strain in the cantilever that is simultaneously transferred to the FBG, resulting in a shift in the wavelength that is proportional to the strain experienced by the cantilever. In this work, we present the experimental results of a vibration sensor design using a cantilever beam to generate an axial uniform strain in the FBG in-line with the vertical axis, which modifies the cantilever's natural frequency that allows the sensor to have a wide frequency broadband without losing sensitivity. This sensor achieved a sensitivity of about 339 pm/g and a natural frequency of 227.3 Hz. The presented design compared with the traditional cantilever beam-based FBG vibration sensors, has the advantages of a simple design for detection on vibration-sensitive structures and its physical parameters can be easily modified in order to satisfy the requirements of the desired vibration measurements.

• Journal of Magnetics
• /
• v.18 no.2
• /
• pp.159-162
• /
• 2013

We present how to optimize the operation condition including frequency of the orthogonal fluxgate sensor in this paper. The orthogonal fluxgate sensor was fabricated with a Co-based amorphous wire with 10 mm long and 100 ${\mu}m$ in the diameter and a 270-turn pickup coil wound on the amorphous wire. In order to investigate the frequency dependence of the sensitivity, output spectra of the sensor which was connected by using a coaxial cable with various lengths of 0.5-5 m were measured with a RF lock-in amplifier. The maximum sensitivities were obtained at different frequencies according to coaxial cable lengths. It was found that the optimal operation frequencies, at which maximum sensitivities were appeared, were almost identical to the frequencies of impedance resonance. The maximum sensitivity and optimal operation frequency were 1.1 V/Oe (${\approx}$ 11000 V/T) and 1.25 MHz respectively.

• Journal of the Microelectronics and Packaging Society
• /
• v.13 no.4
• /
• pp.65-70
• /
• 2006

Carbon nanotubes (CNT) grown by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD), and followed by annealing at $400{\sim}500^{\circ}C$ were investigated for gas sensing under 1.5ppm $NO_{2}$ concentration at an operating temperature of $200^{\circ}C$. The electrical resistance of CNT sensor decreased with temperature, indicating a semiconductor type. The resistance of CNT sensor decreased with $NO_{2}$ adsorption. It was found that the sensitivity of sensor was affected by humidity and decreased under microwave irradiation for 3 minutes. The CNT sensor grown by PECVD had a higher sensitivity than that of CVD.

• Smart Structures and Systems
• /
• v.18 no.2
• /
• pp.217-231
• /
• 2016

The present work aims to develop piezoresistive sensors of excellent piezoresistive response attributable to change in nanoscale structures of multi-wall carbon nanotube (MWNT) embedded in cement. MWNT was distributed in a cement matrix by means of polymer wrapping method in tandem with the ultrasonication process. DC conductivity of the prepared samples exhibited the electrical percolation behavior and therefore the dispersion method adopted in this study was deemed effective. The integrity of piezoresistive response of the sensors was assessed in terms of stability, the maximum electrical resistance change rate, and sensitivity. A composite sensor with MWNT 0.2 wt.% showed the lowest stability and sensitivity, while the maximum electrical resistance change rate exhibited by this sample was the highest (96 %) among others and even higher than those found in the literature. This observation was presumably attributed by the percolation threshold and the tunneling effect. As a result of the MWNT content (0.2 wt.%) of the sensor being near the percolation threshold (0.25 wt.%), MWNTs were close to each other to trigger tunneling in response of external loading. The sensor with MWNT 0.2 wt.% was able to maintain the repeatable sensing capability while sustaining a vehicular loading on road, demonstrating the feasibility in traffic flow sensing application.