Time Response of Hydrogen Sensors

The efficiency of gas sensor application for facilitating the safe use of hydrogen depends to a considerable extent on the response time of the sensor to change in hydrogen concentration. The response and recovery times have been measured for five different hydrogen sensors, three commercially available and two promising prototypes which operate at room temperature. Experiments according to ISO 26142 show that most of the sensors surpass much for a concentration change from clean to hydrogen containing air the demands of the standard for the response times t(90) and values of 2 to 16 s were estimated. For an opposite shift to clean air, the recovery times t(10) are from 7 to 70 s. Results of transient behaviour can be fitted with an exponential approach. It can be demonstrated that results on transient behaviour depend not only from investigation method, and the experimental conditions, like gas changing rate and concentration jump, as well as from operating parameters of sensors. In comparison to commercial MOS and MIS-FET hydrogen sensors new sensor prototypes operating at room temperature possesses in particular longer recovery times.