Metal Oxide Thin Films Prepared by Magnetron Sputtering Technology for Volatile Organic Compound Detection in the Microwave Frequency Range

Abstract

Metal oxide thin films such as copper oxide, titanium dioxide, and tin dioxide deposited by magnetron sputtering technology were verified as a gas-sensitive layer in microwave-based gas sensors operated at 2.4 GHz. The developed gas sensors were tested at room temperature (23 °C) and 50% relative humidity (RH) under exposure to 0–200 ppm of selected volatile organic compounds (acetone, ethanol, and methanol) that are of high interest in industry and biomedical applications. The highest responses to acetone were obtained for CuO-based gas sensors, to ethanol for SnO2-based gas sensors, while for methanol detection both dioxides, SnO2 and TiO2, exhibited good sensitivity.

Tin Dioxide Thin Film with UV-enhanced Acetone Detection in Microwave Frequency Range

“…In this paper, a microwave gas sensor based on the tin dioxide (SnO 2 ) gas layer with UV illumination is investigated for acetone detection in the 0–200 ppm range at room temperature. The gas-sensing properties of SnO 2 at microwave frequencies were previously confirmed and presented in [30]. The obtained results strongly confirm that the UV illumination increases the developed sensor’s sensitivity for acetone, allowing for the detection of lower gas concentrations.…”

“…In the last few years, a number of papers have focused on enhanced acetone detection, utilizing various methods, such as optical detection [8,9,10], electrochemical sensors [11,12,13], metal oxides (MOXs)-based sensors [14,15,16,17,18,19,20], and analytical systems [21,22,23,24,25]. Microwave-based gas sensors with various gas-sensitive layers, including organic layers [26,27] and various MOXs layers [28,29,30], were investigated by the authors as well. The recently obtained results have shown that microwave gas sensors based on metal oxides can easily be utilized for acetone detection in the ppm range at room temperature [28,29,30].…”

“…Microwave-based gas sensors with various gas-sensitive layers, including organic layers [26,27] and various MOXs layers [28,29,30], were investigated by the authors as well. The recently obtained results have shown that microwave gas sensors based on metal oxides can easily be utilized for acetone detection in the ppm range at room temperature [28,29,30]. However, for such sensors, the response/recovery time(s) at room temperature is longer than for conventional applications, where the operating temperature is usually in the 300–500 °C range.…”

GLAD Magnetron Sputtered Ultra-Thin Copper Oxide Films for Gas-Sensing Application

“…The gas-sensitive layer can be realized based on various materials, including organic compounds (e.g., phthalocyanines [2,3]) and metal oxides [4] (e.g., WO 3 [5,6], TiO 2 [7,8], SnO 2 [9,10], In 2 O 3 [11,12], Fe 2 O 3 [13,14], MoO 3 [13,15], ZnO [16][17][18], CuO [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28]). The most common methods for metal oxide depositions are magnetron sputtering [29,30], sol-gel [31,32], thermal oxidation [33,34], hydrothermal techniques [35,36], the spray pyrolysis technique [37,38], and the microwave-assisted method [39,40]. Among them, magnetron sputtering is widely accepted for industrial purposes, because it can be easily adapted to Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) technology; therefore, front-end electronics compounds can be realized by using the same technology.…”

High-performance aramid fabric in infrared shielding by magnetron sputtering method

“…By depositing a metal film on the surface of clothing fabric via magnetron sputtering, the fabric can be given special properties, which expands the application scope of clothing. For example, clothing can be given the properties of electromagnetic shielding, antistatic conduction, intelligent sensing, energy production through thin film solar cells, anti-ultraviolet antibacterial, and infrared shielding functions [13][14][15][16][17]. Jiang et al once prepared copper film deposited nylon yarn by magnetron sputtering at different winding speeds to achieve enhanced electrical conductivity [18].…”