Development of a hydrogen gas sensor using a double SAW resonator system at room temperature

Zainab Yunusa; Mohd Nizar Hamidon; Alyani Ismail; Maryam Mohd Isa; Mohd Hanif Yaacob; Saeed Rahmanian; Siti Azlida Ibrahim; Arafat A A Shabaneh

doi:10.3390/s150304749

Development of a hydrogen gas sensor using a double SAW resonator system at room temperature

Sensors (Basel). 2015 Feb 26;15(3):4749-65. doi: 10.3390/s150304749.

Authors

Zainab Yunusa^{1

2}, Mohd Nizar Hamidon³, Alyani Ismail⁴, Maryam Mohd Isa⁵, Mohd Hanif Yaacob⁶, Saeed Rahmanian⁷, Siti Azlida Ibrahim^{8

9}, Arafat A A Shabaneh¹⁰

Affiliations

¹ Institute of Advanced Technology, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia. zee2yunusa@gmail.com.
² Department of Electrical Engineering, Bayero University Kano, P.M.B 3011 Kano, Nigeria. zee2yunusa@gmail.com.
³ Institute of Advanced Technology, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia. mnh@eng.upm.edu.my.
⁴ Department of Computer and Communications, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia.
⁵ Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Universiti Putra Malaysia 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia. maryam@upm.edu.my.
⁶ Department of Computer and Communications, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia. hanif@upm.edu.my.
⁷ Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Faculty of Engineering Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia. saeedfed@gmail.com.
⁸ Department of Computer and Communications, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia. azlida@mmu.edu.my.
⁹ Faculty of Engineering, Multimedia University, 63100 Cyberjaya, Selangor, Malaysia. azlida@mmu.edu.my.
¹⁰ Department of Computer and Communications, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia. tamimi_127@hotmail.com.

Abstract

A double SAW resonator system was developed as a novel method for gas sensing applications. The proposed system was investigated for hydrogen sensing. Commercial Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) resonators with resonance frequencies of 433.92 MHz and 433.42 MHz were employed in the double SAW resonator system configuration. The advantages of using this configuration include its ability for remote measurements, and insensitivity to vibrations and other external disturbances. The sensitive layer is composed of functionalized multiwalled carbon nanotubes and polyaniline nanofibers which were deposited on pre-patterned platinum metal electrodes fabricated on a piezoelectric substrate. This was mounted into the DSAWR circuit and connected in parallel. The sensor response was measured as the difference between the resonance frequencies of the SAW resonators, which is a measure of the gas concentration. The sensor showed good response towards hydrogen with a minimum detection limit of 1%.