Humidity Effects According to the Type of Carbon Nanotubes

As a new type of one-dimensional nanomaterial, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been used as a chemical sensing material due to their excellent electrical, mechanical and chemical properties. Several recent studies have attempted to obtain an electrochemical sensor based on CNTs, and CNT-based humidity sensors have potential applications in industrial, agricultural and medical fields and in smart wearable electronic devices. Although various CNT-based humidity sensors have been reported, in this work, we investigated the humidity effects in depth and the underlying mechanisms according to CNT type, i.e., semiconducting (s-CNT) and metallic (m-CNT) CNTs, which is determined by the chiral vector during CNT growth. For this purpose, we fabricated CNT-based humidity sensors with highly purified, solution-processed 99% single-walled s-CNT and m-CNT network films bridged by palladium (Pd) electrodes. The fabricated sensors exhibited completely different humidity responses, as denoted by the film resistance as a function of the relative humidity (RH), according to the CNT type. In the s-CNT-based sensor, the resistance tended to decrease as the RH increased, while the m-CNT-based sensor showed the opposite tendency. Based on these results, a humidity sensing mechanism according to the CNT type was proposed in this work. We believe that our findings can serve as design guidelines for CNT-based humidity sensors.

Automated summary

The study investigated the humidity effects and mechanisms of semiconducting and metallic carbon nanotubes (s-CNTs and m-CNTs), respectively, in depth, and fabricated humidity sensors based on CNT network films. The sensors showed different responses to humidity, with the s-CNT-based sensor exhibiting a decrease in resistance with increasing humidity, while the m-CNT-based sensor showed the opposite trend. These findings can serve as design guidelines for CNT-based humidity sensors.