A new miniscule nitrogen dioxide sensor could help protect the environment from vehicle pollutants that cause lung disease and acid rain.

Researchers from TMOS, the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Transformative Meta-Optical Systems have developed a sensor made from an array of nanowires, in a square one fifth of a millimetre per side, which means it could be easily incorporated into a silicon chip.

In research published in the latest issue of Advanced Materials, PhD scholar at the Centre’s Australian National University team and lead author Shiyu Wei describes the sensor as requiring no power source, as it runs on its own solar powered generator.

Wei says, “As we integrate devices like this into the sensor network for the Internet of Things technology, having low power consumption is a huge benefit in terms of system size and costs. The sensor could be installed in your car with an alarm sounding and alerts sent to your phone if it detects dangerous levels of nitrogen dioxide emitted from the exhaust.”

Co-lead author Dr. Zhe Li says “This device is just the beginning. It could also be adapted to detect other gases, such as acetone, which could be used as a non-invasive breath test of ketosis including diabetic ketosis, which could save countless lives.

Existing gas detectors are bulky and slow, and require a trained operator. In contrast, the new device can quickly and easily measure less than 1 part per billion, and the TMOS prototype used a USB interface to connect to a computer.

Nitrogen dioxide is one of the NOx category of pollutants. As well as contributing to acid rain, it is dangerous to humans even in small concentrations. It is a common pollutant from cars, and also is created indoors by gas stoves.

The key to the device is a PN junction – the engine of a solar cell – in the shape of a nanowire (a small hexagonal pillar with diameter about 100 nanometres, height 3 to 4 microns) sitting on a base. An ordered array of thousands of nanowire solar cells, spaced about 600 nanometres apart formed the sensor.

The whole device was made from indium phosphide, with the base doped with zinc to form the P part, and the N section at the tip of the nanowires, doped with silicon. The middle part of each nanowire was undoped (the intrinsic section, I) separating the P and N sections.

Light falling on the device causes a small current to flow between the N and P sections. However, if the intrinsic middle section of the PN junction is touched by any nitrogen dioxide, which is a strong oxidiser that sucks away electrons, this will cause a dip in the current.

The size of the dip allows the concentration of the nitrogen dioxide in the air to be calculated. Numerical modelling by Dr Zhe Li, a postdoctoral fellow in EME, showed that the PN junction’s design and fabrication are crucial to maximising the signal.

The characteristics of nitrogen dioxide – strong adsorption, strong oxidisation – make it easy for indium phosphide to distinguish it from other gases. The sensor could also be optimised to detect other gases by functionalising the indium phosphide nanowire surface.

TMOS Chief Investigator Professor Lan Fu, leader of the research group says “The ultimate aim is to sense multiple gases on the one small chip. As well as environmental pollutants, these sensors could be deployed for healthcare, for example, for breath tests for biomarkers of disease.

“The tiny gas sensor is easily integratable and scalable. This, combined with meta-optics, promises to achieve multiplexing sensors with high performance and multiple functionalities, which will enable them to fit into smart sensing networks. TMOS is a network of research groups across Australia dedicated to progressing this field.

“The technologies we develop will transform our life and society in the coming years, with large‐scale implementation of Internet of Things technology for real‐time data collection and autonomous response in applications such as air pollution monitoring, industrial chemical hazard detection, smart cities, and personal healthcare.”

For more information about this research, please contact connect@tmos.org.au

A Self-Powered Portable Nanowire Array Gas Sensor for Dynamic NO2 Monitoring at Room Temperature

Shiyu Wei, Zhe Li, Krishnan Murugappan, Ziyuan Li, Fanlu Zhang, Aswani Gopakumar Saraswathyvilasam, Mykhaylo Lysevych, Hark Hoe Tan, Chennupati Jagadish, Antonio Tricoli, Lan Fu

Advanced Materials, 10th December 2022

The fast development of the Internet of Things (IoT) has driven an increasing consumer demand for self-powered gas sensors for real-time data collection and autonomous responses in industries such as environmental monitoring, workplace safety, smart cities, and personal healthcare. Despite intensive research and rapid progress in the field, most reported self-powered devices, specifically NO2 sensors for air pollution monitoring, have limited sensitivity, selectivity, and scalability. Here, a novel photovoltaic self-powered NO2 sensor is demonstrated based on axial p–i–n homojunction InP nanowire (NW) arrays, that overcome these limitations. The optimized innovative InP NW array device is designed by numerical simulation for insights into sensing mechanisms and performance enhancement. Without a power source, this InP NW sensor achieves an 84% sensing response to 1 ppm NO2 and records a limit of detection down to the sub-ppb level, with little dependence on the incident light intensity, even under <5% of 1 sun illumination. Based on this great environmental fidelity, the sensor is integrated into a commercial microchip interface to evaluate its performance in the context of dynamic environmental monitoring of motor vehicle exhaust. The results show that compound semiconductor nanowires can form promising self-powered sensing platforms suitable for future mega-scale IoT systems.