Comprehensive study of a Pd–GaAs high electron mobility transistor (HEMT)-based hydrogen sensor

An interesting Pd–GaAs high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) hydrogen sensor is fabricated and studied. For the studied device, a 5 nm-thick undoped GaAs cap layer is grown to suppress the oxidation of the underneath Al0.24Ga0.76As layer. Comprehensive analysis on the electrical properties including equilibrium adsorption (steady-state) and kinetic adsorption (transient) is presented. Experimentally, a high current variation of 17.1 mA/mm is obtained in 9970 ppm H2/air gas at 323 K. A high channel conductance variation of 25.1 mS/mm is also found under the same conditions. This indicates that, in hydrogen-containing ambience, the channel resistance reduces in the linear region of transistor operation. The reaction enthalpy and entropy are −112.74 kJ mol−1 and −367.39 J mol−1 K−1, respectively. This interprets that the hydrogen adsorption process is exothermic and the hydrogen atoms are more ordered when they are adsorbed in a dipolar layer at the metal–semiconductor interface. In the transient analysis, the rate constants of the studied device can be calculated. Then the activation energy of about 33.09 kJ mol−1 is obtained.