Work function based field effect devices for gas sensing

In comparison to state of the art microsensors for gas detection, which are mainly based on conductivity measurements, field effect devices exploiting the gas induced shift of a material´s work function exhibit several superior features: Low power consumption and sensitivity to a wider range of adsorption mechanisms. A hybrid suspended design of the transistor gate, whose air gap permits the access of gas species to the inner surfaces, enables the incorporation of almost all groups of sensitive materials. The topic of this work is to report about design requirements concerning the silicon device structure, the hybrid gate and the mounting techniques.