Dandelion Flower Like GaN Humidity Sensor: Fabrication and Its Excellent Linearity Towards Entire Relative Humidity Range

Abstract

This article reports humidity sensors based on hierarchical gallium nitride (GaN) with flower-like microstructures based on a scalable hybrid approach. We have fabricated 3D dandelion flower-like GaN hierarchical microspheres with an ammonothermal-conjugated ammonification method (750-1150 °C) for the humidity sensors. The GaN microspheres are analyzed by scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, Raman and Fourier-transform spectroscopic methods. It is found that the use of oleylamine in the ammonothermal-ammonification hybrid approach, plays an essential role in the GaN morphology. The GaN sensors are prepared by dip-coating the sensor materials on the interdigitated electrode and their humidity sensing performance have been characterized. The humidity sensing performance is investigated at an applied 1V AC bias, by measuring the impedance and charge transfer resistance as a function of the broad range (10 to 95%) of RH. The GaN sensor exhibits a high response of above four orders of magnitude with excellent linearity and stability within the whole measurement range, while the bare GaN humidity sensors exhibited a low response of less than two orders of magnitude with poor linearity and stability. We have also proposed a possible charge transfer mechanism and studied the influence of the defect degree on the sensing performance of the GaN humidity sensors.