Effect of Humidity on Gas Sensing Performance of Carbon Nanotube Gas Sensors Operated at Room Temperature

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have shown promising results for gas sensing due to their high surface area. Since humidity has a great impact on the electrical conductivity of resistive CNT gas sensors, we have investigated the change of humidity on their sensing properties. In this study, we fabricated vertically aligned CNT-based gas sensors for the detection of volatile organic compounds. The morphologies and phase structures of the fabricated samples were characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), confirming the presence of CNT with some surface impurities. It was found that a relative humidity increase from 10% to 80% can reduce the electrical conductivity of the sensor by around 4%. On the other hand, for a humidity above 80% the conductivity increased slightly. The fabricated device has been used as a gas sensor for volatile organic compounds, and the cross-sensitivity to humidity was investigated. It was found that in the fabricated sensors, a change in humidity up to 80% results in a 40% decrease in the response for the studied organic compounds.