Feedback based gas sensing setup for ppb to ppm level sensing

Abstract

Sensing and quantification of gas at low concentrations is of paramount importance, especially with highly flammable and explosive gases such as hydrogen. Standard gas sensing setups have a limit of measuring ultra-low concentrations of few parts per billion unless the external gas cylinders are changed to ones with low concentrations. In this work, we describe a home-built resistance based gas sensing setup that can sense across a wide concentration range, from parts per billion to parts per million, accurately. This was achieved using two dilution chambers: a process chamber and a feedback assembly where a part of the output gas from the dilution chamber is fed back to the inlet mass flow controller, enabling enhanced dilutions without increasing the number of mass flow controllers. In addition, the gas-sensing setup can measure across a large temperature range of 77–900 K. The developed setup was then calibrated using palladium thin films and ZnO nanoparticle thin films. The setup was tested for reproducibility, concentration response, temperature response, etc. Corresponding sensitivity values were calculated and found to be in good agreement with published values, validating our setup design.