III-V Nitride based triangular microcantilever heater for selective detection of organic vapors at low temperatures

Abstract

Detection of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are widely used in industrial processes and household products, is very important due to significant health hazards associated with them.1 The common techniques used for detecting VOCs often suffer from one or more of the following issues - high power consumption, limited selectivity, complicated functionalization technique and expensive characterization tools.2-7 In this work, we present an unfunctionalized AlGaN/GaN heterostructure based triangular microcantilever heater (TMH) sensor, which has been utilized to perform selective detection of a wide range of diluted VOCs below their auto-ignition temperature based on responses that are strongly correlated with their latent heat and dipole moment.