Enhanced accuracy of palladium-nickel alloy based hydrogen sensor by in situ temperature compensation

Abstract

The influence of working temperature on the accuracy of the PdNi alloy thin film hydrogen sensor was investigated. The PdNi hydrogen sensor was fabricated on a silicon chip together with a Pt temperature sensor by DC sputtering. The PdNi hydrogen sensor shows excellent response to H2 with concentration from 0.02% to 40% at room temperature. Results show that the response of PdNi hydrogen sensor is nonlinearly related to the hydrogen concentration and working temperature. And correction method only based on considering the baseline temperature correction cannot obtain high measurement accuracy in the whole range area. Therefore, in order to improve the full range detection accuracy of PdNi hydrogen sensor, a modified algorithm which takes baseline and sievert constant temperature compensation into account is presented in this work. After applying the algorithm, the PdNi hydrogen sensor exhibits enhanced H2 sensing accuracy and stability even in violent temperature fluctuate situations.