Dresden 2006 – scientific programme

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MM: Metall- und Materialphysik

MM 41: Nanostructured Materials IV

MM 41.4: Talk

Friday, March 31, 2006, 13:15–13:30, IFW D

Point-contact sensors: new prospects for a nanoscale sensitive technique — •Gennadiy Kamarchuk¹, Alexander Pospelov², Andrey Yeremenko¹, Eric Faulques³, and Igor Yanson¹ — ¹B.Verkin Institute for Low Temperature Physics, Kharkov, 61103 Ukraine — ²National Technical University No-dqKharkov Polytechnical InstituteNo-dq, 21 Frunze Str., Kharkov, 61002, Ukraine — ³Institute des Materiaux Jean Rouxel, 2 rue de la Houssinière, F-44322, Nantes, France

The present contribution proposes a new concept for the application of point contacts to gas sensors. Point contacts have been discovered to present excellent and unprecedented characteristics when used as gas sensors. This novel concept has been tested successfully. Copper and aluminum point contacts were investigated in gas media such as NOx, HCl, H2S and human breath. They reveal high sensitivity to these gases: the measured signal increases by 2 to 3 orders of magnitude upon gas exposure. Sensor parameters are fully restored when gas action ceases. Stable reproducibility of experimental results was observed after several exposure cycles onto the investigated point contacts. Gas media with high hydrogen sulfide concentration (in the range of 1 - 100 ppm) caused irreversible changes of the conductive properties of copper point contacts. To conclude, experimental results confirm that proposed concept is valid and works rather well. Point contact sensors appear to be promising tools and open the way to very interesting applications, especially in medicine.