Recent developments in gallium nitride technology for sensor applications

Abstract

The human race of industrialization without oblivious to environmental contaminants has attracted attention of researchers for development of chemical sensors to detect, measure and mitigate drastically detrimental effects of anthropogenic pollutants. A wide congregation of chemical sensors is available in market but a few factors such as cost, accuracy, time of response, sensitivity, operating environment (temperature and pressure range) and power consumption urges to improve and optimize sensors. For this purpose, various varieties of material, covering polymers and semiconductors to nano particles, have been utilized for manufacturing of chemical sensors. Recently, a tremendous paradigm shift has been observed due to introduction of gallium nitride (GaN) in chemical sensing applications. The aim of this paper is to review recent unprecedented sensing utilizations of GaN, in terms of chemical sensing and power applications.