The Potential for Alcohol-containing Gas Sensors Based on DBR Porous Silicon

摘要

In order to use porous silicon as an alcohol gas sensor, we made DBR (distributed Bragg reflector) porous silicon and monitored the change in two parameters during exposure of the DBR porous silicon to an alcohol-containing gas. The sensing parameters were the shift of the reflectance peak and the electrical conductance. When DBR porous silicon is exposed to ethanol and methanol gas, the reflectance spectrum peak is red shifted by 11 nm and 25 nm, respectively. The direct current increases rapidly during exposure to alcohol gas due to the fact that alcohol has a higher dielectric constant than air. After removing the alcohol-containing gas, all sensing parameters returned to exactly their initial values.