A novel strategy to identify gases by a single catalytic combustible sensor working in its linear range

Abstract

Gas identification by a single sensing element is a challenging and promising technology. In this work, a novel strategy to identify gases by a single catalytic combustible sensor working in its linear range is proposed and investigated. In the strategy, a half-wavelength standing wave ultrasonic field is used to catalyze the combustion reaction on the sensing surface, and quantified ultrasonic enhancement effect on the sensing response, which is independent of the gas concentration and varies with the species of analyte gases, is employed to identify the gases. The experimental results show that the success rate of gas identification can reach 100 % when the ultrasonic vibration is strong enough, and the gas identification method has anti-interference capability when there is impurity gas in the target gas. The cause of the anti-interference capability is analyzed. The strategy proposed in this work provides a new design way which can make the structure, data processing and calibration of gas identification systems simpler.