A SINGLE MICROCANTILEVER-TYPE GAS SENSOR WITH ENHANCED SENSITIVITY TO ETHANOL BY SPUTTERING ZNO WITH AU EMBEDDED IN O2 ATMOSPHERE

This paper proposes a microcantilever-type zinc oxide (ZnO) gas sensor fabricated using typical micro-electro-mechanical system (MEMS) process. To achieve low power consumption, we developed a long narrow single cantilever beam and the sensing region is at the free end of it. ZnO was sputtered under the atmosphere of 02 as the sensing layer. And a thin Au buried layer was deposited to form the sandwiched structure of a thin Au layer between two ZnO layers. Ethanol, as a typical volatile gas, was chosen to verify the performance of the proposed sensor. The results indicate that the sandwiched sensing layer shows higher response to ethanol compared with single layer ZnO, and the best sensitivity to 100 ppm ethanol is 7.11. Besides, the response time is 12 s and the sensor consumes a low power consumption of only 5.81 mW.

Automated summary

This paper presents a microcantilever-type zinc oxide gas sensor fabricated using MEMS process, with a sandwiched sensing layer showing better response to ethanol and low power consumption. The sensor design exhibits high sensitivity and short response time.