Reliability of sensors based on nanowire networks

Abstract

Nanowires have a great potential in many industrial applications, including electronics and sensors. Palladium nanowire network-based hydrogen sensors have been found to outperform their counterparts that consist of an individual nanowire or palladium thin or thick films. However, reliability issues that affect these sensors still need to be addressed. This article considers hydrogen gas sensors based on a nanowire network with a square lattice structure. A general model for describing the reliability behavior of this network is proposed. It is shown that the reliability function can be imposed by considering a network of nanowires rather than a single nanowire. Among many other applications, the presented results can also be used to assess the reliability of any nanosystem/ nanodevice where the proposed model is a reasonable choice. What distinguishes the work presented in this article from related work are the unique difficulties that the nanocomponents introduce to the evaluation of reliability and the way reliability is defined over cycles of hydrogen gas.

Keywords:

• Percolation
• site percolation
• bond percolation
• Bernoulli random variable
• reliability function

Acknowledgements

This research was partially supported by a grant from the National Security Agency under grant H98230-11-1-0138.1. Kristin McCullough also acknowledges the use of the Carbon System at the Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Labratory, which was supported by the U. S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, under Contract DE-AC02-06CH11357. Zhili Xiao also acknowledges financial support by the Department of Energy (DOE) grant DE-FG02-06ER46334 (nanowire network fabrication). The United States government is authorized to reproduce and distribute reprints notwithstanding any copyright notation herein.