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Chemiresistors and Their Microfabrication

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Functional Nanomaterials

Part of the book series: Materials Horizons: From Nature to Nanomaterials ((MHFNN))

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Abstract

Rapid industrialization during past few decades has resulted in the emission of gases that pollute environment and pose risk to humanity. Therefore, there is a major concern for protection of the environment, in particular the air we breathe in. People, especially in urban areas, are exposed to a high quantity of toxic and harmful gases such as Cl2, NO2, NO, CO, CO2, NH3, H2S, and SO2. Thus, there is a huge demand for monitoring these hazardous gases, and hence, the need of gas sensors. Based on their detection principle, gas sensors can be classified among various types such as electrical, optical, and mass sensitive. Among the electrical ones, chemiresistive gas sensors (CGS) are widely investigated Thus, this chapter initially introduces CGS, their working and basic characteristics. The power consumption in CGS is generally high owing to their operation at higher temperatures and there have been continuous efforts to minimize it by microfabricating such sensors. Microfabrication results in low power consumption, rapid sensor heating to attain the desired operating temperature owing to lower thermal mass and fast response time of microheater. In addition, mass production owing to batch processing results in cost reduction. Therefore, in the middle part of the chapter various steps involved in microfabrication process along with the evolution of the microfabricated sensor device are outlined. Finally, in the last part, microheater characterization and H2S sensing characteristics of such microfabricated CGS along with a summary and future perspective of microfabrication in gas sensors are described.

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Acknowledgements

V.B. would like to acknowledge the Director, CSIR-NPL India, for his support and encouragement. V.B. also acknowledges DST for the Inspire Faculty award vide Letter No. DST/INSPIRE/04/2016/000690. V.B. thankfully acknowledges the technical support and training provided by staff at National Nanofabrication Centre (NNFC), Micro and Nano Characterization Facility (MNCF) at the Centre for Nano Science and Engineering (CeNSE), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India during his initial years of device fabrication.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Sensor Devices Metrology Section, Environmental Sciences and Biomedical Metrology Division, CSIR-National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi, 110012, India

    Vishal Baloria & Govind Gupta

  2. Centre for Nano Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, 560012, India

    Chandra Shekhar Prajapati & Navakanta Bhat

  3. Department of Electrical Communication Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, India

    Navakanta Bhat

Authors
  1. Vishal Baloria
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  2. Chandra Shekhar Prajapati
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  3. Navakanta Bhat
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  4. Govind Gupta
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Correspondence to Vishal Baloria .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Chemical Sciences, School of Energy Materials, International and Inter University Centre for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala, India

    Sabu Thomas

  2. Institute of Physics, University of Sao Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Nirav Joshi

  3. Berkeley Sensor & Actuator Center, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Vijay K. Tomer

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Baloria, V., Prajapati, C.S., Bhat, N., Gupta, G. (2020). Chemiresistors and Their Microfabrication. In: Thomas, S., Joshi, N., Tomer, V. (eds) Functional Nanomaterials. Materials Horizons: From Nature to Nanomaterials. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4810-9_3

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