Abstract
Along with the development of hydrogen as a sustainable energy carrier, it is imperative to develop very rapid and sensitive hydrogen leaks sensors due to the highly explosive and flammable character of this gas. For this purpose, palladium-based materials are being widely investigated by research teams because of the high affinity between this metal and hydrogen. Furthermore, nanostructured palladium may provide improved sensing performances compared to the use of bulk palladium. This arises from a higher effective surface available for interaction of palladium with the hydrogen gas molecules. Several works taking advantage of palladium nanostructures properties for hydrogen sensing applications have been published. This paper reviews the recent advances reported in the literature in this scope. The electrical and optical detection techniques, most common ones, are investigated and less common techniques such as gasochromic and surface wave acoustic sensors are also addressed. Here, the sensor performances are mostly evaluated by considering their response time and limit of detection.
Highlights
Hydrogen is without doubt known as a very promising energy carrier in the development of a sustainable worldwide economy, improving storage and distribution of energy [1,2]
Devices with either a response time of ≤10 s or a or a limit of detection ≤ 100 ppm have been selected in this table
polyhedral silsesquioxanes oligomeric silsesquioxanes (POSS)-stabilized Pd NPs have a high affinity for attachment to SnO2 surface, their UV-vis absorbance spectrum presents excellent spectral overlap with the fluorescence from SnO2 waveguide and their optical response when exposed to H2 is very fast
Summary
Hydrogen is without doubt known as a very promising energy carrier in the development of a sustainable worldwide economy, improving storage and distribution of energy [1,2]. As reported by Hübert et al [3], several important parameters need to be taken into account in the development of hydrogen sensors including the response time, the detection range, signal accuracy, chemical selectivity, recovery time, low cost, low power consumption and low sensitivity to environmental parameters (relative humidity, pressure, etc.). We will take these parameters (response time and limit of detection) as reference to evaluate the performances of the investigated hydrogen sensors. In fuel cells automobiles, it would be appropriate for on-board safety sensors to be operational in the range of temperature within −40 ◦ C to +40 ◦ C and within 5% to 95% relative humidity They should present a lower detection limit of at most 0.1 vol% of H2 with a response time smaller than 1 s at. NPs-based materials regarding their response times and limit of detectionachieved performances will be addressed.
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