Fabrication of nanostructured silicon nitride thin film gas sensors by reactive direct current magnetron sputtering

In this work, high-quality nanostructured silicon nitride films were prepared by reactive direct current magnetron sputtering technique. The properties of the prepared structures were determined by the ratios of gases (argon and nitrogen) in the discharge gas mixture. This parameter was effectively seen important to control the structural characteristics of the prepared nanostructures, especially surface roughness and particle size. The prepared nanostructures were successfully tested for gas-sensing applications and they exhibited reasonably high sensitivity for their resistance changes to gas concentration with increasing temperature (up to 96% at 350 °C). This work can be good attempt to use silicon nitride nanostructures in such important application.