Comparative Study of Irradiated And Annealed ZnO Thin Films For Room Temperature Ammonia Gas Sensing

Ceramic based thin film sensors are well known for gas sensing applications. These sensors are operated at elevated temperature for good sensitivity. ZnO thin film sensors operated at high temperature are used in ammonia sensing application. But to the best of author´s knowledge no room temperature ZnO (Zinc Oxide) thin film sensors are reported. The deposited ZnO films are found to be highly unstable with respect to resistance of the films at room temperature. To increase the stability two different techniques viz annealing and irradiation are tried. Comparative study of annealed and irradiated ZnO films for stability in resistance is done. Further the performance of these films as ammonia (NH₃) gas sensor at room temperature has been studied. The results obtained are reported in this paper and analyzed.