IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 13, NO.

6, JUNE 2013

2299

A Wireless-Transfer-Based Hydrogen Gas Sensing

System with a Pd/AlGaN/GaN Heterostructure
Field-Effect Transistor (HFET)
Chi-Shiang Hsu, Kun-Wei Lin, and Wen-Chau Liu, Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract In this paper, a wireless hydrogen sensing system

using a Pd/AlGaN/GaN heterostructure field-effect transistor
(HFET) is developed and demonstrated. This HFET device shows
good hydrogen sensing performance, including higher drain
current variation (0.17 mA @ 1 ppm H2 /air gas), fast response
speed, and superior repeatability behaviors. For the sensing
application, a readout circuit is designed to display the value of
hydrogen concentration. Then, these data are fed into single chip
microprocessor for later processing and wireless transmission.
In addition, a grey polynomial differential model algorithm is
employed to significantly reduce the redundant data for alleviate
the wireless transmission load. The wireless monitoring of hydrogen concentration in a remote site longer than 50 m in distance
is successfully demonstrated. From the experimental results, the
proposed wireless hydrogen sensing system shows the advantages
of high hydrogen sensing performance, easy operation, low cost,
high portability, and effective wireless transmission.
Index Terms Grey polynomial differential model (GPDM),
heterostructure field-effect transistor (HFET), hydrogen sensing
system, Pd/AlGaN/GaN, wireless transfer.

I. I NTRODUCTION

ECENTLY, due to the large consumption of fossil fuels,

environmental pollution has become a serious problem in
the world. Thus finding new energy sources, including solar,
wind, water, nuclear, and hydrogen energy, has become an
important issue and been widely investigated. Among them,
the study and application of hydrogen energy has attracted
much attention in recent years. It is known that hydrogen is an
odorless, colorless, and tasteless gas. Also, hydrogen is a clean
and inexhaustible energy source owing to its inherent properties of free pollution and easy acquisition. The hydrogen is one
of the clean energy source which has been applied to many
fields, including fuel cells, industrial fabrication processes,
space techniques, and medical treatments [1][3]. However,
as the hydrogen concentration higher within the range of
475% in air, highly dangerous combustion and explosion

Manuscript received February 14, 2013; accepted March 6, 2013. Date of

publication March 13, 2013; date of current version April 26, 2013. This work
was supported by the National Science Council of China under Contract NSC
100-2221-E-006-044-MY3. The associate editor coordinating the review of
this paper and approving it for publication was Prof. Sandro Carrara.
C.-S. Hsu and W.-C. Liu are with the Department of Electrical Engineering,
Institute of Microelectronics, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 70101,
Taiwan (e-mail: q18981272@mail.ncku.edu.tw; wcliu@mail.ncku.edu.tw).
K.-W. Lin is with the Department of Computer Science and Information
Engineering, Chaoyang University of Technology, Taichung 41349, Taiwan
(e-mail: kwlin@cyut.edu.tw).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/JSEN.2013.2252527

may be expected. Therefore, the continuous monitoring of

accurate hydrogen concentration in environment is a necessary
and critical work. In 1975, the first metal-oxide-semiconductor
(MOS)-type hydrogen sensor was developed and presented
by Lundstrom et al. [4]. Up to now, the semiconductorbased gas sensors have been widely studied and demonstrated
[5], [6]. Yet, some semiconductor materials (e.g., Si) are not
suitable for operating under harsh atmosphere such as the hightemperature and high-radioactive environment. In comparing
with Si-based gas sensors, the sensor devices fabricated with
compound semiconductor-materials, e.g., InP and GaN, exhibit
advantages of fast response time, high sensitivity, and high
thermal stability [7][13]. The GaN based materials including
the related ternary compound semiconductor AlGaN have been
widely employed to produce high-performance optical and
electronic devices [14][20]. In this paper, an AlGaN/GaN
heterostructure field-effect transistor (HFET) is used as a
hydrogen gas sensor to demonstrate its sensing performance
in a simple wireless monitoring system. This sensing system
includes two parts, i.e., the sensor device and interface (readout circuit). Because sensing signals of the sensor device are
in analog type, they are difficult to be applied and saved in
the studied system. Therefore, an interface (read-out circuit)
should be used to transfer and display the sensing data. Practically, in some special cases, the hydrogen sensor is needed to
be operated at harsh ambiances, e.g., high temperature, high
radioactive, and narrow space environment. Thus, the wireless
transmission capability of hydrogen concentration monitoring
is important and required. Generally, single chip microprocessor (MCU) shows advantages of easy operation, low cost, and
wide applications. Hence, a MCU is applied to measure the
gas concentration and to transfer sensing results into a remote
display through a 2.4 GHz wireless transfer unit. In this paper,
an hydrogen detection system with wireless transmission
(> 50 m in distance) capability is investigated and demonstrated. The studied sensing system shows advantages of low
cost, easy fabrication, high sensitivity, low detection limit, and
fast response.
II. E XPERIMENTAL
In this paper, the studied hydrogen detection system
included two parts, i.e., the hydrogen sensing device and
its associated read-out circuit. The epitaxial structure of the
studied device was grown by a metal organic chemical vapor
deposition (MOCVD) system on a c-plane sapphire substrate.

1530-437X/$31.00 2013 IEEE

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IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 13, NO. 6, JUNE 2013

Fig. 1.
Schematic cross section and SEM image of the studied
Pd/AlGaN/GaN HFET device.

The studied device structure consisted of a 18 nm-thick

undoped AlN buffer layer, a 800 nm-thick undoped AlGaN
buffer layer, a 400 nm-thick undoped GaN buffer layer, a
20 nm-thick GaN active channel layer with a donor concentration of 41017 cm3 , and a 30 nm-thick Al0.3 Ga0.7 N Schottky
contact layer with the doping concentration of 1 1018 cm3 .
The related sheet carrier density and electron mobility are
8 1012 cm2 and 1030 cm2 /(V.s), respectively. The wafer
surface was cleaned using the hydrochloric acid, acetone, and
deionized water with immersing the sapphire substrate in an
ultrasonic oscillator for 10 minutes to remove surface particles
such as the organic contaminants, metal ions, and native
oxides. The mesa isolation was formed by an inductivelycoupled-plasma reactive ion etching (ICP-RIE) system to
etch specific regions on the wafer surface before the device
fabrication. The patterns of the studied device were formed by
traditional photolithography, vacuum evaporation, and lift-off
techniques. The metals Ti (10 nm)/Al (150 nm) were deposited
sequentially on the surface of Al0.3 Ga0.7 N layer as Ohmic
contacts with vacuum deposition and annealing at 900 C for
10 min. Then, the Pd (20 nm) metal was employed to form
Schottky contacts by a vacuum evaporation process with the
contact area of 2.05 103 cm2 . The used gate length and
width were 1 and 100 m, respectively. Currentvoltage (I
V ) characteristics of the studied device were measured by
an HP Agilent 4155C semiconductor characteristic analyzer.
The schematic cross-section diagram of the studied device and
related top view of SEM image are depicted in Fig. 1. Different
concentration of hydrogen gases were introduced during the
sensing measurement. The read-out circuit was composed of
a hydrogen sensor readout part, an analog to digital signal
converter (ADC), a MCU, a 2.4 GHz wireless transmission
unit, and a remote work station. The corresponding block
diagram of this wireless hydrogen gas sensing system is
illustrated in Fig. 2(a). Also, the related grey polynomial
differential model (GPDM) algorithm used in this system is
depicted in Fig. 2(b).
III. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION
For hydrogen gas sensing measurement, the studied
Pd/AlGaN/GaN HFET-based hydrogen sensor was exposed to
air ambience and hydrogen gases with different concentration

(a)

(b)
Fig. 2. (a) Complete block diagram of the studied hydrogen sensing system
and (b) related GPDM algorithm used in this system.

of 1 ppm, 500 ppm, and 1% H2 /air at room temperature

(30 C), respectively. Experimentally, output I V characteristics of the studied HFET device under different hydrogen gas
concentration are shown in Fig. 3. The applied gate-source
voltage (V GS ) is decreased from 0 to 4 V with 1V/step.
The drain saturation current I DS values at air and 1% H2 /air
are 13.6 and 16.2 mA with V GS = 0 V and V DS = 5 V,
at 30 C. The variations of drain saturation current I DS
(I DS difference between measured at hydrogen gas and air
ambience, V GS = 0 V and V DS = 5 V) under the introduced
hydrogen gas concentration of 1 ppm, 500 ppm, and 1%
H2 /air are 0.17, 1.65, and 2.56 mA, respectively. Obviously,
the variation of drain saturation current I DS is increased
with increasing the hydrogen concentration. Even at a low
hydrogen gas concentration (1 ppm H2 /air), the studied device
still exhibits a significant I DS of 0.17 mA. As shown in
Fig. 3, the I DS is decreased with decreasing the V GS . In order
for the detailed electrical characteristics of the studied device,
an ON / OFF current ratio is employed. The ON / OFF current
ratio R IDS(ON/OFF ) is defined here as the ratio between the drain
saturation current sat specific on state and cut-off regime

R IDS(ON/OFF ) (%) = (IDS(ON) IDS(CUT- OFF) ) 100%

= (IDS,VGS =0 IDS,VGS =4V ) 100%. (1)

HSU et al.: WIRELESS-TRANSFER-BASED HYDROGEN GAS SENSING SYSTEM

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Fig. 3. Current-voltage (I V ) characteristics of the studied hydrogen sensing

device under the introduced different hydrogen gases at 30 C.

Fig. 4. Transient response curves upon the introduction and removal of

different hydrogen gases at 30 C.

The drain-source voltage is fixed at V DS = 5 V to keep

the device be operated at saturation region. The obtained
R IDS(ON/OFF ) values are 7531, 5722, 6402, and 5888% at air,
1 ppm, 500 ppm, and 1% H2 /air gases, respectively. Based on
this I V characteristics and R IDS(ON/OFF ) performance, the studied device exhibits good saturation and pinch-off characteristics in hydrogen ambiances. The related hydrogen gas sensing
mechanism of the studied HFET device could be explained
as follows. It is well known that the used gate catalyst metal
palladium (Pd) can effectively dissociate hydrogen molecules
into hydrogen atoms and enhance the penetration of hydrogen
atoms through Pd metal. Upon exposing to hydrogen gases,
hydrogen molecules reach the Pd surface of the studied device
could dissociate to hydrogen atoms. Then, some hydrogen
atoms diffuse into the Pd metal bulk and accumulate at
PdAlGaN metal-semiconductor (MS) interface [21][23].
Under the action of the original built-in field bi at MS interface, a dipolar layer is developed by the polarization of these
accumulated hydrogen atoms [24][27]. This dipolar layer
causes an additional electrical field a which is in the opposite
direction toward the original built-in field bi . This certainly
causes the decrease of the magnitude of bi and the related
Schottky barrier height  B at MS interface [26], [28]. Hence,
the Schottky barrier height  B could be modulated by the
introduced hydrogen gas. Besides, the change of the Schottky
barrier height ( B ) also causes the modulations of 2-D
electron gas (2DEG) in channel and the related drain current
I D [26], [28]. The measured hydrogen transient responses are
illustrated in Fig. 4. The applied gate-source and drain-source
voltages are fixed at 0 and 5 V. The introduced hydrogen gas
concentrations are 50, 100, 500, 2000, and 10 000 ppm H2 /air,
respectively. When the hydrogen concentration is higher than
500 ppm H2 /air, the interesting overshoot phenomenon is
found. This behavior is mainly attributed to the influence
of oxygen, especially for the H2 O2 reaction [8]. From the
Fig. 4, it is observed that the drain saturation current variation
I DS is increased with increasing the introduced hydrogen

gas concentration. Clearly, the I D is raised up rapidly when

the hydrogen gas is introduced, and is descended down quickly
once the hydrogen gas is removed. The response time constant
a and recovery time constant b are important parameters
for transient response [22]. Generally, the response (recovery)
time constant is defined as the time of I DS reaches 70%
value of the difference between initial and final steady-state
currents upon the exposing (removal) hydrogen gas [22].
Experimentally, a values at 50, 100, 500, 2000 ppm, and
1% H2 /air ambiances are 129, 32, 18, 9, and 9 S respectively.
Besides, the corresponding b values are 204, 108, 52, 31,
and 15 S respectively. Thus, from these results, the studied
HFET device exhibits good hydrogen gas sensing transient
characteristics at room temperature.
In real-time hydrogen sensing applications, long-term and
continuous monitoring of the hydrogen concentration is an
important issue. By considering the long-term hydrogen sensing measurement, the repeatability performance of the studied
device when exposed upon a 1% H2 /air gas is displayed in
Fig. 5. In the repeatability measurement, a 1% H2 /air hydrogen
gas is introduced and removed three times at room temperature. Obviously, very similar transient responses corresponding
to each introduction and removal action of the 1% H2 /air
hydrogen gas are found. So, the studied HFET device exhibits
good repeatability performance at hydrogen gas ambiance.
Because the original hydrogen sensing signal of the studied
device is in analog type, it is not suitably applied in practical
digital type system. Hence, in this paper, a read-out circuit is
employed to process and display the sensing value. The input
signal of this read-out part is obtained directly from the studied
hydrogen sensing device. The signal flows is described and
explained as follow. An amplifier circuit is used to amplify
the hydrogen sensing signal. This amplified signal is then
transferred into a serial ADC unit. The main function of this
ADC is to convert the analog-type signal into digital-type
signal. The sensing signal is represented as an 8-bit digital
signal and then fed into the MCU part. The related schematic

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IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 13, NO. 6, JUNE 2013

Fig. 5. The repeatability of the studied device under the introduced 10 000
ppm H2 /air gas.

illustration is shown in the Fig. 2. From experimental transient

characteristics of the studied device, the corresponding of
drain saturation current at different hydrogen gas concentration
could be obtained. Then, these hydrogen sensing responses are
collected and recorded in database of the MCU for recognizing
the corresponding hydrogen concentrations. Hydrogen sensing
responses are long-term with a large amount of data, which
are useless for wireless and precise data transmission. Hence,
it is needed to properly reduce the transient of gas sensing data
as well as to preserve of the accurate sensing characteristics.
For this purpose, a grey model is employed in this proposed
sensing system. The related grey theory was first reported
by Deng et al. in 1982 [29] for dealing with the problem
in control system. Over past years, the grey theory has been
widely applied in many areas [30], [31]. In traditional grey
theory, the GM (1, 1) model is the most popularly used
one [29]. The GM (1, 1) model includes first-order accumulated generating operation (1-AGO) preprocessed data which
exhibits exponential-like formation and causes relatively poor
performance. Based on the acute variation of hydrogen sensing
responses, the generally used GM (1, 1) model is not suitable
for applying in transient behaviors of the studied HFET device.
Hsieh et al. proposed a grey polynomial modulation (GPM)
to overcome this problem related to dramatic data change in
image processing [32]. In this paper, the main purpose is to
develop an accurate and useful hydrogen-sensing model and
reduce computional complexity. Hence, a GPM approach is
employed in this sensing system. The grey model could be
interpreted as follows. Typically, hydrogen sensing data is a
nonnegative sequence series and could be assumed as [32]
G = {G(k), for 1 k 3}.

(2)

Then the hydrogen sensing data series could be preprocessed by a 1-AGO method and obtained as
 k


(1)
G(i ), 1 k 3 .
(3)
G =
i=1

Fig. 6. Comparison of experimental and GPDM process results of the studied

device under the introduced 10 000 ppm H2 /air gas.

After preprocess step, the sensing data is changed into a

2-degree polynomial equation and could be expressed as
G (1) (k) = ak 2 + bk + c, for 1 k 3.

(4)

The coefficients a, b, and c, in (4) could be obtained from

a matrix as [32]
(1)
1
G (1)
111
a
b = G (1)(2) 4 2 1 .
(5)
931
c
G (1)(3)
At last, basing on the first-order inverse accumulated generating operation (1-IAGO), the studied hydrogen sensing model
could be developed and presented as
G (k + 1) = G (1) (k + 1)G (1) (k)

(6)

where G (1) and G (1) values could be estimated and obtained

by exchanging the coefficients in (4).
By using this approach, the related data of GPM-based
hydrogen sensing responses could be obtained. After the
modeling process, the precision of this approach could be
found by comparing original sensing results with the modeling
data as shown in Fig. 2(b). Note that the amount of calculated
point number in this approach is very small. In order to
retain the original features of hydrogen sensing responses,
the additional data point will be added every interval 20
points. Fig. 6 shows the measured and calculated hydrogen
transient responses upon exposing to a 10 000 ppm H2 /air gas.
Square points show the experimental results while the circle
points represent the corresponding developed grey polynomial
differential model (GPDM) data. Clearly, the employed GPDM
algorithm is prominent and effective to reduce the amount of
hydrogen sensing response data points. Practically, the amount
of response data is significantly reduced from 751 to 24 points
per hydrogen sensing cycle.
In addition, the GPDM data is well matched to experimental
results even under this extremely high reduction (97% =
(75124)/751)100%) in the original data points. When the
MCU successfully reduces the quantity of hydrogen sensing

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IV. C ONCLUSION

(a)

In summary, a wireless hydrogen sensing system is successfully developed and demonstrated. The studied HFET device
exhibits significant hydrogen sensing characteristics under
introduced hydrogen gases at room temperature. Experimentally, drain current variations I DS of 0.17, 1.65, and 2.56 mA
are obtained under the introduced 1 ppm, 500 ppm, and
1% H2 /air gases, respectively. In addition, from the transient
properties, the a and b values of 9 and 15 sec under a
1% H2 /air ambiance are found. The studied HFET device
also demonstrates good repeatability performance of hydrogen
response at room temperature. For the sensing system, a
readout circuit is used to collect and display the introduced
hydrogen concentration. These sensing data are fed into the
MCU part and used to compare or match with prestored results
in database of MCU. Another function of the readout circuit
is wireless transmission capability. Furthermore, a GPDM
method is used to effectively reduce the redundant hydrogen
sensing data for alleviating the transmission load. A remote
transmission (d > 50 m in distance) of hydrogen sensing
signals from a wireless transmission unit to a remote monitor
has been successfully achieved. Thus, the studied hydrogen
sensing system demonstrates advantages of high hydrogen
sensing performance, easy operation, low cost, high portability,
and significant wireless transmission capability.
R EFERENCES

(b)
Fig. 7. (a) Photograph and (b) demonstrated results on a remote screen of
the studied hydrogen sensing system.

response data, these processed data could by quickly transferred into an indicator or through the 2.4 GHz wireless
transmission unit to a remote monitor as shown in Fig. 2(a).
In this paper, the 2.4 GHz wireless transmission unit is
composed of a radio frequency (RF) circuit, a base band
circuit, a memory unit, a MPU, and an universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter (UART)/universal serial bus (USB)
interface. The interface of UART/USB is connected to the
studied hydrogen system and the processed hydrogen sensing
data are then transferred into memory unit. The memory unit
is used to receive and save the transmitter signal. The MPU
performs the transmission step for the wireless use. When all
the transmitted signals are received and saved in memory unit,
these signals will be sent to the baseband part. These signals
are modulated and encoded in the baseband part. When the
transmitted signals are packaged completely, the packaged data
will be transferred through the RF circuit into a remote monitor
as revealed in Fig. 2(a). A photograph of this sensing system is
shown in Fig. 7(a). A corresponding illustration of the remote
(longer than 50 m in distance d) screen information, which
demonstrates an introduced 9811 ppm H2 /air gas, is shown in
Fig. 7(b).

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IEEE SENSORS JOURNAL, VOL. 13, NO. 6, JUNE 2013

Chi-Shiang Hsu received the B.S. and M.S. degree

in electrical engineering and computer science information engineering from Chienkuo Technology University and Chaoyang University of Technology in
2007 and 2009, where he is currently pursuing the
Ph.D. degree at the Institute of microelectronics
and Department of Electrical Engineering, National
Cheng-Kung University.
His current research interests include semiconductor gas sensors.

Kun-Wei Lin received the B.S. degree in electrical

engineering from Fu-Jen University, Taipei, Taiwan,
in 1995, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical
engineering from the National Cheng-Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan, in 1997 and 2003, respectively.
He is currently an Associate Professor with the
Department of Computer Science and Information
Engineering, Chaoyang University of Technology,
Taichung, Taiwan. His current research interests
include hydrogen sensors and circuit design.

Wen-Chau Liu (A91M93SM02) received the

B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from National Cheng-Kung University (NCKU),
Tainan, Taiwan, in 1979, 1981, and 1986, respectively.
He was with the Faculty with National ChengKung University, as an Instructor and an Associate
Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering in 1983, 1986, and 1992, respectively. Since
2002, he has been a Distinguished Professor with
the same department, and since 2005, he has been
an Associate Chair with the Department of Electrical Engineering and the
Director of the Institute of Microelectronics, NCKU. His research and teaching concern semiconductor device physics, analysis, and modeling. He has
published more than 300 journal papers. He holds 54 patents in the semiconductor field. His current research interests include IIIV heterostructure and
superlattice devices, including induced base transistor, superlattice-gate and
heterostructure buffer layer FETs, camel structure gate FET, sawtooth-dopingsuperlatticed devices, heterostructure-emitter bipolar transistor, superlatticeemitter resonant-tunneling bipolar transistor, heterostructure-emitter and
heterostructure-base transistor, superlatticed negative-differential-resistance
device, quantum-well-doped NDR devices, metalinsulatorsemiconductor
like multiple switching devices, low-dimensional quantum electron devices,
deep submicrometer meter devices and technologies, and high-sensitivity
semiconductor gas sensors.
Dr. Liu has passed the Higher Civil Service examinations and has received
the technical expert licenses of ROC in the electrical and electronic fields in
1979 and 1982, respectively. He is a member of Phi Tau Phi and the IEEE
Electron Devices Society.