Structural and electrical characterization of thin cerium-tin oxide heterolayers for hydrogen sensing

Abstract:
Renewable energies are opening new markets for the sensing of fuel gases. Improvement and adequations to the sensing requirements can be provided by the development of novel active materials and sensor designs. In this work, we report the electrical and structural characterization of metal oxide devices produced by conventional micro photolithography. Thin layers of metallic Ce and Sn were deposited via magnetron sputtering and thermal evaporation, respectively, followed by a thermal oxidation at different temperatures. AFM, ToF-SIMS and Raman spectroscopy are used to study the metal oxide layers. Electrical characterization is done using different metal contacts via TLM and 4p probe structures. Finally, we present the change in current produced by exposing the thin heterolayers to an H2-containung fuel gas mixture.