Special Issue "Challenges in Gas Detection and Sensing"

Dear Colleagues,

Gas detection technology has already become an indispensable technology for various aspects in fields such as safety systems, environmental monitoring applications, disease diagnosis, and industrial process controls. However, conventional gas sensors operate at elevated temperatures, which leads to high power consumption. Gas sensing depends on chemical adsorption and the reaction of desired gas molecules on semiconductor surfaces requiring activation energy. Hence, the room temperature gas sensor shows poor performance. However, gas sensor low temperatures provide reliable and safe sensing in explosive and flammable environments. Huge efforts have been devoted to enhancing room temperature gas sensor performance. For example, light irradiations have replaced the thermal energy required to promote surface reactions of the sensor without increasing the substrate temperature.

Sensor malfunctioning is one of the major challenges in gas sensing technology, and selectivity is one of the key parameters in gas sensor technology. Selectivity is the capability of the sensor device to identify the desired gas among the gas mixtures. It can be measured by the ratio of the sensor signal induced by the target gas to the interface gases. However, conventional resistive gas sensors generally exhibit non-discriminative responses toward a range of interfering gases, such as carbon monoxide, ethanol benzene, toluene, and xylene. If a particular sensor aims to detect formaldehyde, typically resistive gas sensors show a higher response to ethanol than formaldehyde. Moreover, ethanol is omnipresent, and its concentration is higher than formaldehyde indoors, which can cause formaldehyde malfunction. Thus, special attention needs to be paid to the selective detection of the desired gas. Accordingly, this Special Issue seeks to showcase research papers, communications, and review articles that focus on overcoming challenges such as sensor malfunctioning, susceptibility to pollution, and contaminations on the sensor surfaces in gas sensing technology.

We look forward to receiving your submissions.

Dr. Maddaka Reddeppa
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

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• gas sensor
• sensing device
• room temperature
• selectivity
• light irradiation
• malfunctioning