We investigated SiC-based hydrogen gas sensors with metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) structure for high temperature process monitoring and leak detection applications in fields such as the automotive, chemical and petroleum industries. In this work, a thin tantalum oxide (Ta2O5) layer was exploited with the purpose of sensitivity improvement, because tantalum oxide has good stability at high temperature with high permeability for hydrogen gas. Silicon carbide (SiC) was used as a substrate for high-temperature applications. We fabricated Pd/Ta2O5/SiC-based hydrogen gas sensors, and the dependence of their I-V characteristics and capacitance response properties on hydrogen concentrations were analyzed in the temperature range from room temperature to 500 °C. According to the results, our sensor shows promising performance for hydrogen gas detection at high temperatures.

We investigated a SiC-based hydrogen gas sensor with metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) structure for high temperature process monitoring and leak detection applications. The sensor was fabricated by Pd/Ta2O5/SiC structure, and a thin tantalum oxide (Ta2O5) layer was exploited with the purpose of sensitivity improvement, because tantalum oxide has good stability at high temperature as well as high permeability for hydrogen gas. In the experiment, dependence of I-V characteristics and capacitance response properties on hydrogen gas concentrations from 0 to 2,000 ppm was analyzed at room temperature to 500℃. As the result, our sensor exploiting a Ta2O5 dielectric layer showed possibilities with regard to use in hydrogen gas sensors for high-temperature applications.