Studies of NO(2) Gas-Sensing Characteristics of a Novel Room-Temperature Surface-Photovoltage Gas Sensor Device

In this work the characteristics of a novel type of room temperature NO(2) gas sensor device based on the surface photovoltage effect are described. It was shown that for our SPV gas sensor device, using porous sputtered ZnO nanostructured thin films as the active gas sensing electrode material, the basic gas sensor characteristics in a toxic NO(2) gas atmosphere are strongly dependent on the target NO(2) gas flow rate. Moreover, it was also confirmed that our SPV gas sensor device is able to detect the lowest NO(2) relative concentration at the level of 125 ppb, with respect to the commonly assumed signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio, as for the commercial devices.