No CrossRef data available.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 March 2011
In recent years, an increase in usage of methane gas in household and automobile industry has been observed. Detection of methane is always a great cause of concern for safety at home or automobile industries, productions in mines and chemical factories. This paper reports the response characteristics of rf-sputtered SnO2 thin films (90 nm thin) loaded with nanoscale catalytic clusters for detection of methane. Ultrathin (8 nm) metal and metal-oxide catalysts (Pt, Ag, Ni, Pd, Au, NiO, Au2O3) clusters are loaded over the surface SnO2 thin film. The SnO2-Pd cluster structure is found to exhibit an enhanced response (97.2%) for 200 ppm of methane at a relatively low operating temperature (220oC). The enhanced response is shown to be primarily due to the dominant roles played by both Fermi level energy control mechanism and spillover mechanism.