Fabrication of SnO2 thin film based electronic nose for industrial environment

Nowadays e-nose is attracting the attention of many researchers due to its wide spread applications. The most important application falls in the category where human beings cannot afford to risk smelling toxic gases. Other important applications are continuous monitoring of pollutant and explosive gases, in oil and natural gas exploration, possible predictions of volcanic eruptions, medical applications, etc. The fast paced technology has helped develop sophisticated devices that have led to miniaturization of electronic nose with advanced capabilities. This work reports on the performance of an array of four different sensor structures, using tin oxide as the base material, developed in order to detect (200 ppm) of LPG, methane, ammonia and H2S. The array, developed is composed of SnO₂ thin films loaded with nanoclusters of four different catalysts namely Platinum, Palladium, Silver and Copper oxide by sputtering or evaporation technique. A good classification, success rate and prediction have been achieved for different target gases.