The global gas sensor market is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 8.3% from 2020 to 2027, as reported by Grand View Research in its market analysis report. This expansion is sustained by the extremely wide spectrum of current and future applications of gas sensor devices such as indoor or outdoor air quality monitoring -CO2, CH2O, NOx, SO2, volatile organic compounds (VOCs)-, safety at homes (e, g, CO detectors) or in the chemical and petrochemical industry (flammables, toxic gases, VOCs), public security (detection of chemical threats such a warfare agents) or in medical diagnosis via breath analysis (e,g, assessing lung function or early cancer detection by detecting exhaled biomarkers).
While most gas sensor systems used nowadays in the industry and for air quality monitoring (outdoors) are bulky, costly and energy demanding, the next years will see an increasing demand for affordable, miniaturized, low-power, yet durable, reliable, highly sensitive, selective and stable gas sensors. This demand is to be fuelled by the deployment of the 5G technology and the resulting consistent improvement in the functionality and reliability of the IoT in complex environments.
The HF2ET2D aims to support the advance of research in nanotechnology, achieving highly sensitive and selective miniaturized gas sensors, paving the way for their integration in wireless systems in the future. The aim of this project is to develop, fabricate, fully characterise and test high frequency field effect transistors (HF-FETs) able to work as gas sensors. The first challenge is to achieve high quality 2D nanomaterials, reach a desired (low) number of layers and succeed on their functionalization. Moreover, it aims at obtaining the best process of fabrication for each material. The project is centered on novel two-dimensional materials like InSe and PtSe2 because of their interesting electrical and optical properties. Our objective is primary to prepare layered nanosheets by mechanical or liquid-phase exfoliation for resistive gas sensors, then use these results to select the best material for HF-FET gas sensors.
Finally, in order to enhance the performance of the gas sensors, the HF2ET2D project explores hybridization for achieving high selectivity and light excitation as a way to both further improve selectivity and enhance response reversibility and overall sensor stability at room temperature operation (i.e. low-power operation).
