Palladium/Single-Walled Carbon Nanotube Back-to-Back Schottky Contact-Based Hydrogen Sensors and Their Sensing Mechanism

Abstract

A Schottky contact-based hydrogen (H-2) gas sensor operable at room temperature was constructed by assembling single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) on a Si/SiO2 substrate bridged by Pd microelectrodes in a chemiresistive/chemical field effect transistor (chemFET) configuration. The Schottky barrier (SB) is formed by exposing the Pd SWNT interfacial contacts to H-2 gas, the analyte it was designed to detect. Because a Schottky barrier. height (SBH) acts as an exponential bottleneck to current flow, the electrical response of the sensor can be particularly sensitive to small changes in SBH, yielding an enhanced response to H-2 gas. The sensing mechanism was analyzed by I V and FET properties before and during H-2 exposure. I-V-sd characteristics clearly displayed an equivalent back-to-back Schottky diode configuration and demonstrated the formation of a SB during H-2 exposure. The I-V-g characteristics revealed a decrease in the carrier mobility without a change in carrier concentration; thus, it corroborates that modulation of a SB via H-2 adsorption at the Pd-SWNT interface is the main sensing mechanism.