Document Type

Article

Publication Date

6-18-2020

Abstract

Hydrogen (H2) sensing is crucial in a wide variety of areas, such as industrial, environmental, energy and biomedical applications. However, engineering a practical, reliable, fast, sensitive and cost-effective hydrogen sensor is a persistent challenge. Here we demonstrate hydrogen sensing using aluminum-doped zinc oxide (AZO) metasurfaces based on optical read-out. The proposed sensing system consists of highly ordered AZO nanotubes (hollow pillars) standing on a SiO2 layer deposited on a Si wafer. Upon exposure to hydrogen gas, the AZO nanotube system shows a wavelength shift in the minimum reflectance by ∼13 nm within 10 minutes for a hydrogen concentration of 4%. These AZO nanotubes can also sense the presence of a low concentration (0.7%) of hydrogen gas within 10 minutes. Their rapid response time even for a low concentration, the possibility of large sensing area fabrication with good precision, and high sensitivity at room temperature make these highly ordered nanotube structures a promising miniaturized H2 gas sensor.

Publication Title

Nanoscale Advances

Grant

8022-00387B; 11116; 1904592

Funder

Independent Research Fund Denmark; DFF Research Project 2 “PhotoHub”; Villum Fonden “DarkSILD project”; Direktor Ib Henriksens Fund, Denmark; National Science Foundation (NSF)

Rights

This open access work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

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