Professor Richard B. Kaner
Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry,
Department of Materials Science & Engineering and
The California NanoSystems Institute
Recognized as an alternative energy source, hydrogen burns cleanly and may be produced from renewable energy sources. As hydrogen becomes increasingly important, capabilities for detection become paramount in applications such as leakage prevention, fire warning systems, biomedical applications and monitoring of environmental pollution.
The challenge is that hydrogen is a colorless and odorless gas. Conducting polymer nanofiber based Surface Acoustic Wave (SAW) gas sensors have been investigated for their ability to detect hydrogen gas.
This collaboration between Prof. Richard Kaner's group at UCLA and Prof. Wojtek Wlodarski's group at RMIT in Melbourne, Australia has led to the reproducible detection of <1% hydrogen in synthetic air with response times of less than 10 seconds (1). The major advantages of this type of sensor are that it works well at room temperature and detects well below the explosion limit of hydrogen gas (3%). Due to room temperature operation, this novel gas sensor is promising for environmental and industrial applications.
(1) Presented at IEEE Sensors, Irvine, CA, Nov. 2, 2005.