Design and Optimization of a Microheater for the Application of Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) based Gas Sensor in VOC Detection

Microheaters have been extensively investigated for its wide application in designing a Metal Oxide Semiconductor based gas sensor. Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) deposited on a thin glass film can be made use to detect various Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) at different elevated temperatures. To achieve this higher temperature requirement, power management is also a very crucial part of gas sensor design. In this paper, four different structures of microheater are discussed. The simulation was carried out using Finite Element Method. The length and structure of the microheater were varied for optimization. From the simulated designs of microheater, the optimized one was calculated by considering two important aspects, power management and uniform temperature distribution over the gas sensitive layer of the gas sensor. Hence this kind of gas sensor design with an inbuilt temperature modulating part shows potential application towards VOC profiling in future work.