Micro/Nano Gas Sensors: A New Strategy Towards In-Situ Wafer-Level Fabrication of High-Performance Gas Sensing Chips

Nano-structured gas sensing materials, in particular nanoparticles, nanotubes, and nanowires, enable high sensitivity at a ppb level for gas sensors. For practical applications, it is highly desirable to be able to manufacture such gas sensors in batch and at low cost. We present here a strategy of in-situ wafer-level fabrication of the high-performance micro/nano gas sensing chips by naturally integrating microhotplatform (MHP) with nanopore array (NPA). By introducing colloidal crystal template, a wafer-level ordered homogenous SnO(2) NPA is synthesized in-situ on a 4-inch MHP wafer, able to produce thousands of gas sensing units in one batch. The integration of micromachining process and nanofabrication process endues micro/nano gas sensing chips at low cost, high throughput, and with high sensitivity (down to ~20 ppb), fast response time (down to ~1 s), and low power consumption (down to ~30 mW). The proposed strategy of integrating MHP with NPA represents a versatile approach for in-situ wafer-level fabrication of high-performance micro/nano gas sensors for real industrial applications.