Characteristics of Highly Sensitive Hydrogen Sensor Based on Pt-WO₃/Si Microring Resonator

Hydrogen gas has attracted attention as a new energy carrier, and simple but highly sensitive hydrogen sensors are required. We fabricated an optical hydrogen sensor based on a silicon microring resonator (MRR) with tungsten oxide (WO₃) using a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS)-compatible process for the MRR and a sol-gel method for the WO₃ layer and investigated its sensing characteristics at device temperatures of 5, 20, and 30 °C. At each temperature, a hydrogen concentration of as low as 0.1 vol% was successfully detected. The gas sensitivity increased with decreasing temperature. The dependence of the sensitivity on the device temperature can be attributed to the thickness of tungsten bronze (H_xWO₃) formed by WO₃ during exposure to hydrogen gas. In addition, a hydrogen gas sensor based on a silicon-MRR-enhanced Mach-Zehnder interferometer (MRR-MZI) is proposed and its significantly high sensing ability using improved changes in the transmittance of light is theoretically discussed.