Microsystem Technologies 3 (1997) 183 —190 ( Springer-Verlag 1997
Silicon hotplates for metal oxide gas sensor elements
G. Sberveglieri, W. Hellmich, G. Müller
Abstract Low-power-consumption metal oxide gas sensors
and gas sensor arrays can be produced by combining
micromachining and thin-film technologies. In the present
paper the state-of-the art in this field is reviewed. In the first
part the problem of thermal losses from a heated metal oxide
film is addressed and the necessity of miniaturisation of gas
sensing devices is pointed out. The thermal properties of
realized silicon hotplates are compared and analysed with
respect to thermal equivalent circuit models. In addition, the
results of accelerated thermal ageing tests are presented. These
latter results demonstrate that micromachined heater elements
are likely to exhibit device lifetimes of the order of 30 years
when operated at membrane temperatures around 400 °C. In
the second part of the paper attention is drawn to novel
methods of gas detection which are enabled by employing
stacks of different thin film materials on micromachined
hotplates. In this context, recent results on temperature-and
field-effect modulated gas detection experiments are discussed.
1 is reached. As a consequence the size of the housing can be
Introduction
In recent times the market demand for low cost gas sensors has
been growing due to increased environmental standards. Such
sensors exhibit a high selectivity, a low power consumption
and mechanical robustness. Silicon micromachining allows for
small heated surface areas and therefore for a reduced power
consumption. Selectivity can be achieved by building arrays
consisting of several micromachined sensor elements [Endres
et al. (1996), Hellmich et al. (1996)]. For arriving at battery-
operated sensor elements several micromachining approaches
Received: 16 May 1997/Accepted: 22 May 1997
G. Sberveglieri, W. Hellmich
Università degli Studi di Brescia, Dipartimento di Chimica e Fisica per
l’ingegneria e per i Materiali, Gas Sensor Laboratory, Via Valotti 9,
I-25133 Brescia, Italy
G. Müller
Daimler-Benz AG, Research & Development, F2 M/M
Postfach 80 04 65, D-81663 München, Germany
Correspondence to: W. Hellmich
This work was supported in part under the ESPRIT contracts no. 6374
‘‘MMMGAS’’ and ‘‘SMOG’’. The authors should also like to acknow-
ledge interest and support by Drs. B. Thomas and S. Paasche and
Mr. G. Marca.
183
have been investigated in the past [Hoefer (1994), Perego
(1995), Dori (1996), Hellmich (1996)]. In this paper we will
focus on the results obtained within the ESPRIT Project
’’MMMGAS’’. These film technologies have been combined
with silicon micromachining techniques to arrive at miniatur-
ized gas sensor elements. In addition accelerated life time tests
were performed to establish the thermal stability of such
microstructures.
The gas sensor elements developed within this project are
small consuming only some 100 mW of heating power. This
figure is likely to be reduced by one order of magnitude in the
near future. A small power consumption not only makes
battery operation feasible but also reduces the costs of the
sensor housing. For a heating power of 1 W a cylindrical
sensor housing with 1 cm diameter and 1 cm height will have
a surface temperature of around 70 °C when operated in
a room temperature environment. This requires temperature
stable plastic or metal housings. For a reduced power
consumption of 100 mW, a housing temperature of only 30 °C
reduced and cheap plastic materials can be used. Since
housing is an important cost driver, the final price of the whole
sensor will be reduced by reducing its power consumption.
The combination of thin film technology with silicon
micromachining offers novel possibilities of selectivity control.
The thermal time constants of micromachined sensors are in
the range of 1 to 10 msec (Table 1). As a consequence fast
temperature cycling experiments can be performed. Further-
more the sensitivity of the gas sensitive layer can be
dramatically influenced by an electrical field applied perpen-
dicularly to the direction of the current flow. This biasing field
can be generated between gas sensitive layer and heater,
without providing for additional electrodes!
2
Micromechanical solutions
Commercial metal oxide gas sensors (see for instance Fig. 4)
usually consist of a ceramic substrate heated to temperatures
ranging from 400 °C to 600 °C. The substrate is suspended
by wires in the housing. The thin wires provide for thermal
isolation between the hot substrate and the cold environment
(Chap. 5). Depending on the ratio of the substrate and
housing sizes the power consumption of commercial gas
sensors is in the order of 1 Watt. Because of the high substrate
temperatures the bonding of the wires to the substrate has to
be temperature stable. So it is more expensive than standard
bonding techniques.
 Table 1. Properties of micromachined hot plate structures as developed by different research groups. For comparison the thermal properties of
a miniaturized sintered pellet structure are given

Heater: Heating power Temperature Thermal time Type Reference

lateral extension (mW) (°C) constant
(lm) (ms)

900 130 500 10 membrane Fig. 1, Fig. 3;

200 67 500 0.6 spider Suehle et al. (1993)
200 \50 425 2 spider DiMeo Jr. et al. (1996)
100 \50 550 1 spider Semancik et al. (1995)
100 \10 300...600 ? spider Dücso8 et al. (1996)
ca. 100 20 350 4 spider Fung et al. (1995)
184 150 60 500 \200ms pellet Takada et al. (1996)

On the contrary, micromechanics is a way to reduce the
heated surface area and thereby the power consumption of the
gas sensors. Table 1 presents a comparison between the power
consumption and the thermal time constants as obtained by
employing different micromecanical approaches. By an
appropriate design one can achieve, that the power consump-
tion is proportional to the linear extent of the heated area (Sect.
3.5) and that the time constants are indirectly proportional to
this extent. As a consequence smaller heated areas lead to
reduced levels of power consumption and faster response
times. In the last line of Table 1 a conventional hot wire sensor
with reduced size is presented for comparison.
Micromechanics furthermore integrates the transition
between the hot sensitive layer and the cold environment into
the sensor chip. The sensor chips therefore can be bonded and
assembled like normal silicon chips by standard equipment.
There are mainly two kinds of silicon hotplates, the membrane-
type and the spider-type ones.
obtain a good thermal isolation the silicon is etched off
underneath the heater. A thin membrane remains, carrying the
heater element. The membrane consists of Si N and SiO .
3 4 2
Both materials display a low thermal conductivity and provide
for thermal isolation (Sect. 3.2). On top of the heater element
the gas sensitive layer is deposited employing the two-step
RGTO-process [Sberveglieri et al. (1990)]. This type of
membrane structure has been used to obtain the results of this
paper.
The advantage of the above-described membrane structure
is its comparatively low power consumption even when using
relatively large heated surface areas. This is because the sensor
can be designed in such a way that any cold parts neither of the
frame nor of the housing are closer to the heated surface than
the wafer thickness.
The disadvantage lies in the processing from the backside of
the wafer. This requires additional equipment for the
lithography on the backside of the wafer.

2.1
Membrane-Type
One example of a micromachined gas sensor element is shown
in Fig. 1 [Hellmich et al. 1995]. A silicon frame carries a thin
membrane. The center of the membrane is heated to some
400 °C by a platinum heater which is also used as a temperature
sensor, for convenience. The functions of heating and
temperature sensing, however, can also be separated by
integrating another resistor for temperature measurements. To
2.2
Spider-Type
Another example of a micromachined gas sensor is displayed
in Fig. 2 [Suehle, J. et al. (1993)]. In this device spider-
like support beams carry a hotplate with the sensitive layer.
Under the hotplate the substrate is etched off to provide for
thermal isolation. In this case the etching is performed from
the front side, so advantageously no photolithography from the
backside is required and all lithographic steps can be done
using standard semiconductor processing equipment. Only at
the end a KOH etching step is required, which cannot be
performed in a standard silicon foundary. Very probably this is

Fig. 1. Cross-section through a micromachined membrane-type gas Fig. 2. Micro hotplate gas sensor as developed by Suehle, J. et al.
sensor (1993)
the reason for the popularity of this latter approach [Suehle
et al. (1993), DiMeo Jr. et al. (1996), Semancik et al. (1995),
Fung et al. (1995)].
Recently a slightly modified approach has been reported
by Dücso8 et al. (1996). Instead of etching the silicon substrate
by a concentrated (some 30%) KOH solution, the silicon is
made porous by HF in a first step and then the porous silicon is
etched by a diluted (1% ... 2%) KOH solution.
The spider-type device exhibits a high stability against
mechanical shocks. The air can flow around the small hotplate
and does not need to flow around the whole chip as in the case
of the membrane-type solution.
One disadvantage of this concept is the limited distance
between the hot and the cold parts which is necessarily smaller
than the wafer thickness. Another disadvantage is, that the gas
sensitive layer must be deposited after the etching of the
substrate, because this layer cannot withstand the etching
solution. The heater of the spider type has been made of poly-Si
passivated by SiO . Consequently it can be assumed that the
2
life-times are shorter compared to a Pt-heater devices (Sect. 4),
although life-time data were not reported yet.
3 equitemperature surface. The heat conductivity may even
Heating power consumption
There are simple models by which we can estimate the different
contributions to the power consumption of a gas sensor. These
models are helpful for providing rough estimates in that they
provide helpful information on the influence of various
geometrical parameters. More detailed results can be obtained
from sophisticated methods like FEM-simulations. In Sect. 3.5
and Sect. 3.6 those models are applied to both micromachined
and commercial gas sensors.
3.1
Planar Geometry
Consider two parallel planes with an area A separated by
a medium with a heat conductivity k and a distance d small
compared to their lateral extension a (a2\A). Stationery heat
conduction within such a configuration can be treated in
analogy to Ohm’s law. In such a case a power flow Ppl will be
necessary to sustain a temperature difference *T between the
two plates :
A a2
Ppl\*T · j · \*T · j · (1)
d d
The planar geometry model provides a good approximation
for the heat losses across the support beams of spider-like hot
plates (Fig. 2) or the bond wires of commercial gas sensors
(Fig. 4). It also describes the heat loss across the membrane of
membrane-type heater elements, provided the distance
between heated area and silicon frame is small compared to the
heater size.
3.2
Cylindrical geometry
Heat conduction Pcy through a medium with a heat conductiv-
ity k between two concentric cylinders with radii ra and ri and
a length l can be described by:
2njl ·*T
Pcy\ (2)
ln(ra/ri )
This cylindrical model will be used for estimating the heat
loss across the membrane of membrane-type heater elements.
This approximation necessarily will become better, for
decreasing heater size and increasing distances between heater
and silicon frame. Because of corner effects it is better to use
a cylindrical rather than a planar approximation in this case.
185
3.3
Spherical geometry
This is the approximation that best describes the heat
conductivity of the ambient air in most cases. The reason is
that ‘‘normally’’ the equi-temperature surfaces in the far field
of any body in three-dimensional space are spheres. This
means that the extension of the body must be small compared
to the extension of equi-temperature surfaces. The word
‘‘normally’’ hides the other condition: The environment with
a isotropic heat conductivity has to extend far beyond the
depend on temperature, which is the case for the heat
conductivity of air.
So both, the hot gas sensor and the cold ambient are
approximated as concentric spheres with radii ri and ra,
respectively. For the radius of the inner sphere ri a character-
istic length of the heated area is used. The difference between
ra and ri should be comparable to the smallest distance between
hot gas sensitive layer and cold surrounding elements like the
sensor housing. The outer radius ra on the other hand has only
a minor influence on the transported heat Psph in equation (3),
as long as ra is large compared to ri.
Equation (3) describes exactly the heat Psph transported
between two concentric spheres with radii ri and ra and the
temperature difference *T. The medium between the two
spheres is assumed to have the thermal conductivity k.
4nj ·*T
Psph\ +4njri · *T (3)
(1/ri[1/ra)
If one wants to optimize the power consumption, the
most powerful screw is the size of the heated area represented
by the inner radius ri. For a low power consumption ri
has to be as small as possible.
3.4
Radiation
The heated area also looses heat by radiation. This is described
by Stefan Botzmann’s law (4):
Phl\peAT4 (4)
Phl is the radiation power, r\5.67 · 10[18Wm[2K[4 is the
radiation constant, A is the radiating area, T is the absolute
temperature and e is the emissivity. Phl is normally small
compared to the heat flow through the ambient air. At
temperatures of the order of 400°C the radiative power loss
amounts to a few per cent of the total heating power only.
 3.5
Power consumption of MMMGas heater elements
The total power consumption P of a gas sensor can be split into
three parts: The heat flow transported away by the ambient air
Pair , the heat carried away via solid-state heat conduction
across the membrane or the support beams Psolid and finally
the flow of thermal radiation Phl from the heated surface.
Pair can be split again into two parts: One part is the diffusion
of heat through stationary air Pk and the other is convection
Pc, that refers to heat transported via air in macroscopic
motion. It is difficult to measure Pc, but FEM - simulations
186 showed, that Pc is expected to be in the order of 5% of Pk for
the microstructures discussed here.
P\Pair]Psolid]Phl (5)
The measured total power consumption P as a function of
the membrane temperature is plotted as a function of the
membrane temperature T in Fig. 3. At the preferred operation
temperature of 400 °C the total power consumption amounts
to some 100 mW. The temperature of the sensor housing is
about 30 °C, i. e. 10 °C above the ambient temperature. The
total membrane area and its heated interior had lateral
extensions of 1700 and 900 lm, respectively. So the inner
radius ri is of the order of 450 lm and the outer one ra about
850 lm.
For the calculation of the heat flow through the ambient air
Pair the spherical model (3) is used neglecting the effect of
convection, i. e.: Pair+Pk. A difficulty is the temperature
dependence of the heat conductivity of the ambient air.
It amounts to 0.026 W/m/K and 0.051 W/m/K at room
temperature and at 400°C, respectively [Enzyclopédie des gas
(1976)]. Since the temperature gradient is largest near the
heated area, it is more accurate to use the heat conductivity of
400°C and to overestimate the power Pair slightly. For these
data (3) predicts, that 113 mW are carried away by the ambient
air. This is slightly more than the measured total power
consumption.
The membrane consists of a Si3N4 and a SiO2 layer with
thicknesses of 100 nm and 700 nm, respectively. The inner and
outer radii ri and ra are again 450 lm and 850 lm, respectively.
Because the outer radius ra is about twice as large as the inner
radius ri, the cylindrical model (2) seems to be more
appropriate to calculate the heat Psolid carried away by the
membrane. Since Psolid will turn out to be small compared to
the total power consumption, it is not very important whether
a planar or a cylindrical geometry is assumed. Formula (2)
predicts a solid - state heat loss across the membrane of 2 mW,
only.
Equation (4) finally predicts a radiative heat flow of Phl
of 1.8 mW at an emissivity e of 0.2. Experimentally the
power loss due to the ambient air Pair can be eliminated by
measuring the power consumption of the gas sensor in
vacuum. Finally the heat flows over the membrane Psolid and the
radiation power Phl can be separated by their different
temperature dependence. Psolid is proportional to the excess
temperature *T and Phl is proportional to the fourth power of
the absolute temperature T. Pfaller (1993) performed these
measurements and found out that both contributions amount
to 3 mW and 2.5 mW, respectively at 400 °C with the total
Fig. 3. Power consumption P and thermal response time q of
MMMGas sensor elements
heating power amounting to some 100 mW. This is in very
good agreement with the estimations on the basis of Eqs (2)
and (4) made above.
Since the total power consumption of micromachined gas
sensor elements can be attributed to more than 90% to the heat
conductivity of the ambient air and only 5% to convection, it is
reasonable to compare the temperature dependence of the
measured power consumption and the heat conductivity. To
this end the ‘‘model’’ power Pm is defined by (6). It is
proportional to the heat conductivity k(T), the excess
temperature (T[Tu) and a proportionality constant C.
Figure 3 reveals a very good agreement of Pm with the
measured power consumption P.
Pm\C · j(T) · (T[T ) (6)
!
In Fig. 3 also the thermal time constants of the MMMGas
sensor elements are given. The thermal time constants were
measured by switching the membrane temperature from
Tbefore to Tafter. It turned out, that the thermal time constants
depended only on the value Tafter . On an absolute scale the
thermal response times range from 20 ms to 10 ms at room
temperature and 500 °C, respectively.
These time constants are also compared to the heat
conductivity of air. Since a high heat conductivity shortens the
time constants, the time constants are expected to be
proportional to the inverse of the heat conductivity. So the
formula C@/j(T) has been fitted to the time constants. Figure 3
shows, that indeed the temperature dependence of air accounts
for most of the temperature dependence of the thermal time
constants.
3.6
Power consumption of commercial thick film sensors
(3) and (4) can also be applied to commercial thick film gas
sensors such as those produced by Umweltsensortechnik
GmbH. Figure 4 shows a cross-section through such a sensor
element. The heated substrate has a square geometry with
a linear dimension of 3 mm. The thickness of the substrate is
 187

Fig. 5. Thermal stability test of a micromachined gas sensor

Fig. 4. Cross section through a commercial gas sensor (UST)

0.8 mm. So the inner radius ri of (3) can be chosen to be

1.5 mm. The metallic housing is cylindrical and has an inner
diameter of 7.7 mm and a height of 5 mm. So the substrate is
seperated from the housing by some 2.3 to 2.4 mm. As
a consequence the outer radius ra is chosen to be 3.8 mm.
For a sensor temperature of 530 °C, at which the heat
conductivity of air amounts to k\0.058 W/m/K, and a hous-
ing temperature of 70 °C (3) the power consumption
due to heat conduction in air is predicted to be 0.83 W. The
power emitted by radiation Phl is 83 mW (4). The measured
heating power, on the other hand, amounts to some 1.05 W. If
one takes into account, that also the contacts of the housing
will remain cold but are much closer to the heated substrate Fig. 6. Life time and measurement time of micromachined gas
than the rest of the housing, it is clear, that we underestimate sensors
the power consumption of this commercial gas sensor by some
150 mW. Because of the higher operating temperature the
radiation becomes more important but the total power The results of an accelerated life-time test on micro-
consumption is still dominated by the heat conductivity of the machined gas sensors as developed within the MMMGas
surrounding air. project are shown in Fig. 5. The temperature is ramped in
25 °C steps. Shortly after a temperature step also the temper-
ature of the sensor housing is increased slightly by less than
4
one degree. The thermal time constants of the sensor housing
Thermal stability
amount to 88 s. This is the reason for the faster drop of the
Before working with micromachined sensors it is important to
heating power directly after the temperature jumps. To
establish the thermal stability of the heater elements. To this
suppress the effect of the rising housing temperature the
end, a number of membrane-type sensors have been slowly
relative drop of the heating power (dP/dt)/P shortly before the
destroyed by increasing the temperature in a step by step
following temperature jump is calculated and displayed in
manner. The temperature was inferred by measuring the heater
Fig. 6. These data show, that the degradation of the heaters is
resistivity. So both, the measured temperature and the
a temperature activated process with an activation energy of
resistivity are kept constant during each temperature step
1.95 eV:
whereby the heating power is being adjusted. A degradation of

A B
the heater increases its resistivity and the measured temper- dP/dt 1.95eV
ature will increase, although the actual temperature decreases. \9 · 104 [1/s] · exp (7)
P kB T
So the power control reduces the heating power to keep
resistivity and measured temperature constant. Consequently By defining a maximum allowable relative power change one
the decrease of the heating power is a measure for the is able to calculate a life-time of a micromachined sensor
degradation. structure. For normal sensor operation it seems reasonable to
 tolerate a relative heating power change of 1%. At 400 °C
sensor temperature a 1% heating power change leads roughly
to 1% or 4 °C temperature change. These results are labeled
‘‘measurement time’’ in Fig. 6. So measurement times of 6 and
28 hours are obtained at 600 °C and 550 °C, respectively. This is
sufficient for research purposes. At more realistic operating
temperatures of 400 °C measurement times of 104 hours or 1.5
years are to be expected.
If the resistivity change due to degradation is compensated,
a higher heating power change of — lets say — 20% can be
tolerated. The degradation can be compensated by measuring
188 the resistivity at ambient temperature from time to time. By
degradation this resistivity is increased, too. The data for
a 20% heating power change are labeled ‘‘lifetime’’ in Fig. 6. So
‘‘lifetimes’’ of 120 and 560 hours are obtained for 600 °C and
550 °C operation. This is enough for characterizing sensitive Fig. 7. Variation of heater power input and sensing layer conductance
layers up to some 600 °C. For realistic operation temperatures in a temperature cycling experiment
of around 400 °C the lifetime is some 30 years. During sensor
operation a warning may be displayed after a 10% heater
resistivity change, although the sensor will keep on working for
some time.
Extrapolating measurements taken within hours to years
may lead to false results. As (4) contains only one exponential,
a single thermally activated degradation mechanism has been
assumed. To support this thesis, long term measurements at
lower temperatures have to be performed.

5
Advanced modes of sensor operation

5.1
Temperature cycling
The technique based on cycling the device temperature
between high (400 °C) and low temperatures (room temper-
ature to 200 °C) is finding wider applications for obtaining
higher selectivity for CO detection [Figaro (1991); Hellmich et
al. (1995)]. In this context an attractive feature of microm-
achined silicon devices is the small heat capacity associated
with extremely thin membranes. As has already been shown
above, the thermal response of such membranes is of the order
of a few msec. For this reason, the micromachined heater
elements lend themselves very easily towards temperature-
modulated modes of operation.
In Fig. 7 we report the results of a temperature cycling
experiment which had been performed using one of the
microstructures shown in Fig. 1. In this experiment, the sensor
was operated in a background of 100 ppm CO admixed to
humidified synthetic air with the membrane temperature being
periodically cycled between 400 and 150 °C. We observed that,
under these conditions, the response to CO is enhanced by
about a factor of 4 and that the average power consumption is
reduced to about 40% as compared to operation under
isothermal conditions.
Figure 8 summarizes the results of similar CO detection
experiments. In this figure the conductance of the sensitive film
at the end of the ‘‘cold’’ period is plotted as a function of the
humidity background. The data of Fig. 8 demonstrate that the
cross sensitivity to humidity can be clearly reduced by raising
the ‘‘low’’ temperature towards 200 °C. Under these latter
conditions the adsorption of water vapor on the sensor surface
Fig. 8. Variation of the sensing layer conductance upon operation in
CO and synthetic air of various humidity backgrounds. Test 1 and
test 2 distinguish two experiments performed using different values of
the low temperature
is reduced and a constant alarm level can be used between 20
and 80% relative humidity.
5.2
Sensitivity control by field effect
A further attractive feature of using SnO2-thin films in
combination with micromachined heater elements is that the
gas-sensitive metal oxide films can be arranged in field-effect
configurations. It is necessary to use thin-film gas sensors,
because the electrical field will not penetrate thick film gas
sensors. This possibility is sketched in Fig. 9. Basic experi-
ments, during which only the bias voltage has been changed,
showed, that the whole sensitive layer can be electron-depleted,
but only for a short time in the range of 10 to 30 minutes. As
a consequence, to effectively influence electron density and
thus the sensitivity of the gas sensitive layer, the bias voltage
has to be cycled. A typical measurement with a cycled bias
voltage is shown in Fig. 10.
Fig. 11 summarizes the sensitivity dependence to CO,
humidity and NO2 on the electron density. The columns for
electron accumulation, for electron depletion and for

Fig. 9. Micromachined gas sensor with electrical circuit for bias
voltage measurements
Fig. 10. NO2 - measurement with cycled bias voltage: electron
depletion reduces the sensitivity to NO2
Fig. 11. Variation of the CO, humidity and NO2 sensitivity with gate
bias voltage
uninfluenced electron density are black, white and grey,
respectively. The sensitivity in this plot is the deviation of the
conductivity with test gas divided by the conductivity in wet
synthetic air Ggas/Gair from 1. As the resistivity of an insensitive
layer does not depend on the composition of the ambient air,
Ggas/Gair\1 for such resistors. It can be clearly seen that
electron depletion reduces the sensitivity and may even change
the normal behavior of the sensitive layer. For the adsorption
of H2O and NO2 electrons are necessary to build the adsorbates
OH[ and NO~, respectively. So it is clear, that electron
3
depletion leads to a reduced sensitivity to these gases.
Under uninfluenced electron density or electron accumula-
tion CO is oxidized with oxygen ions on the SnO2- surface to
CO2. This mechanism causes electrons to be injected into the
bulk of SnO2, leading to a higher conductivity. Electron
depletion causes oxygen to desorb. If a CO molecule does not 189
find as many oxygen atoms on the SnO2-surface to be oxidized
to CO2 , the conductivity of the SnO2-layer will not decrease any
more. The decrease of the conductivity for electron depletion
may be attributed to the adsorption of CO at the SnO2 - surface.
6
Conclusions
Gas-sensitive metal oxide semiconductor films have been
deposited onto micromachined substrate heater elements. In
particular, the following results have been obtained:
—We have shown that the micromachining approach allows
the heating power consumption to be reduced by about one
order of magnitude with respect of commercial devices. Such
a reduction is essential for realizing battery - operated sensor
arrays [Endres et al. (1995)]:
—the small thermal inertia allows for the successful
implementation of temperature-cycling methods in the gas
detection process;
—the thin film topology of the micromachined gas sensor
elements allows for novel methods of selectivity control such as
field-effect modulation.
Sensors of this type are expected to experience a wide
commercial distribution in the detection of environmental
pollutants such as CO, NO2 and O3 as well as flammable gases
such as methane and propane.
References
Cavicchi RE; Suehle JS; Kreider KG; Gaitan M; Chaparala P (1995)
Optimized Temperature Pulse Sequences for the Enhancement of
Chemically-Specific Response Patterns from Micro-Hotplate Gas
Sensors, Transducers ’95, Eurosensors IX, proceedings, Stockholm,
Sweden, 823—826
DiMeo Jr F; Semancik S; Cavicchi, RE; Poirier GE (1996) Hetero-
epitaxy of Conducting Oxides on Silicon Using Oxide Buffer
Layers, The 6th International Meeting on Chemical Sensors,
proceedings, Gaithersburg
Dori L; Cardinali GC CNR - LAMEL, Bologna, Italy, private
communications.
Dücso8 Cs; Vázsonyi Ë; Ädám, M; Bársony I; Gardeniers JGE; van den
Berg A (1996) Porous silicon bulk micromachining for thermally
isolated membrane formation, Eurosensors X, proceedings,
Leuven, Belgium, 227—230
Endres HE; Goettler W; Jander HD; Drost S; Sandmaier H;
Sberveglieri G (1995) Improvement in signal evaluation methods
for semiconductor gas sensors, Sensors and Actuators B, 27,
267—270
Endres H-E; Göttler W; Hartinger R; Drost S (1996) A thin - film SnO2
sensor system for simultaneous detection of CO and NO2 with
neural signal evaluation, conference ‘‘Sensoren und ihre Anwen-
dungen’’, Bad Nauheim
 Enzyclopédie des gas, L’ air liquide, (1976) Elsevier, Amsterdam
Figaro (1991) Technical Catalogue, Gas Sensor TGS 203
Fung S; Tang Z; Chan P; Sin J; Cheung P (1995) Thermal Analysis and
Design of a Micro-Hotplate for Integrated Gas Sensor Applications,
Transducers ’95, Eurosensors IX, proceedings, Stockholm, Sweden,
818—821
Hellmich W; Krenkow A; Bosch - v. Braunmühl, G Müller; C Perego;
G Faglia; G Sberveglieri (1995) A selective and highly sensitive CO
sensor based on RGTO - SnO2 films deposited onto Si micro-
machined structure, Proc. Second Asia Conference on Chemical
Sensors (EACCS’95) Xi’an, China, 137—141
Hellmich W; Müller G; Bosch - v. Braunmühl Ch; Doll T; Eisele I
(1996) Field - Effect - Induced Gas Sensitivity Changes in Metal
190 Oxides, Eurosensors 96, proceedings, Leuven, Belgum, 505—508
Perego C; Sberveglieri G; in D’ Amico A; Sberveglieri G (ed.s) (1995)
Sensors for Domestic Applications, pp. 217—225. Singapore: World
Scientific
Hoefer U; Kuehner G; Schweizer W; Sulz G; Steiner K (1994) Sensors
and Actuators B 22: 115—119.
Hellmich W (1996) Feldeffektinduzierte Empfindlichkeitssteuerung
bei mikromechanisch hergestellten Halbleitergassensoren auf SnO
2
- Basis, PhD - thesis, Universität der Bundeswehr München
Kunt TA; Mc Avoy TJ; Cavicchi RE; Semancik S; Ratton L;
Fuja T (1996) Application of Data-Based Dynamic Modeling
Techniques to Temperature-Programmed Microhotplate Gas
Sensors, The 6th International Meeting on Chemical Sensors,
Gaithersburg
Pfaller K (1993) Entwicklung und Vermessung miniaturisierter
Gassensorelemente, diploma thesis, Fachhochschule München
Sberveglieri G; Faglia G; Groppelli S; Nelli P; Camanzi A (1990)
A new technique for growing large surface area SnO2 thin fims
(R. G. T. O. technique), Semicond. Sci. Technol., 5: 1231ff
Semancik S; Cavicchi RE; Kreider KG; Suehle JS; Chaparala P (1995)
Selected-Area Deposition of Multiple Active Films for Conduc-
tometric Microsensor Arrays, Transducers ’95, Eurosensors IX,
proceedings, Stockholm, Sweden 831—834
Suehle JS; Cavicchi RE; Gaitan M; Semancik S (1993) Tin Oxide
Gas Sensor Fabricated Using CMOS Micro - Hotplates and In - Situ
Processing, IEEE Electron Device Letters, Vol. 14, NO. 3:
118—120
Takada T; Shiozawa H; Kobayashi H; Tanjou H; Matsubara Y (1996)
Miniaturized Hot Wire Type Semiconductor Gas Sensor Operated
with a Battery, The 6th International Meeting on Chemical Sensors,
Gaithersburg