Review of GaN Nanowires Based Sensors

Ahmed M. Nahhas

doi:10.12691/ajn-8-1-4

Abstract

This paper presents a review of the recent advances of GaN based nanowires sensors. GaN has gained substantial interest in the research area of wide band gap semiconductors due to its unique electrical, optical and structural properties. GaN nanostructured material exhibits many advantages for nanodevices due to its higher surface-to-volume ratio as compared to thin films. GaN nanostructured material has the ability to absorb ultraviolet (UV) radiation and useful in many optical applications. Recently, GaN nanostructured based devices have gained much attention due to their various potential applications specially in nanowires sensors. GaN nanowires sensors have been used in many devices such as gas sensors, biosensors, and pressure sensors. The recent aspects of GaN based nanowires sensors are presented and discussed. The performance of several sensors based devices which have been demonstrated on GaN is reviewed. The structural, electrical, and optical properties are also reviewed.

Highlights

The group III-Nitride semiconductor materials have attracted a lot of interest for new generation of optoelectronic devices [1]
The study results showed that the flower-like ZnO (FZnO)-gallium nitride (GaN) based gas sensor had sensitivity (Ra/Rg=26.9), when the sensor is exposed to ethanol at the concentration of 50 ppm at RT [86]
The study results showed that the vertical heterostructure diode gas sensor showed fast, repeatable, reproducible, recoverable, and stable RT operable gas-sensing performance for toxic gases, including nitrogen dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and ammonia [88]

Summary

Introduction

The group III-Nitride semiconductor materials have attracted a lot of interest for new generation of optoelectronic devices [1] The advantage with these materials is the flexible bandgap varying from 0.7 to 6 eV covering an ultra-broad spectrum, from deep ultraviolet up to near infrared [2], allowing the development of numerous applications. GaN is a very hard, chemically and mechanically stable wide bandgap (3.4 eV) semiconductor material with high heat capacity and thermal conductivity which makes it suitable to be used for sensors [9], for high power electronic devices such as field effect transistor (FET) [10] and for optoelectronic devices such as light emitting diode (LED) [11]. In nanostructures having a large specific area, the surface states effect became significant in influencing the carrier recombination mechanism [16]

GaN Nanostructured Materials Doping

GaN Nanowires Sensors Based Devices

Findings

Conclusion