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This study presents different approaches to increase the sensing area of NiO based semiconducting metal oxide gas sensors. Micro- and nanopatterned laser induced periodic surface structures (LIPSS) are generated on silicon and Si/SiO2substrates. The surface morphologies of the fabricated samples are examined by FE SEM. We select the silicon samples with an intermediate Si3N4layer due to its superior isolation quality over the thermal oxide for evaluating the hydrogen and acetone sensitivity of a NiO based test sensor.

We present results on very thin NiO films which are able to detect 3 ppm of acetone, toluene and n-butyl acetate in synthetic air and to operate at 300°C. NiO films with 25 and 50 nm thicknesses were prepared by dc reactive magnetron sputtering on alumina substrates previously coated by Pt layers as heater and as interdigitated electrodes. Annealed NiO films are indexed to the (fcc) crystalline structure of NiO and their calculated grain sizes are in the range from 22 to 27 nm. Surface morphology of the examined samples was influenced by a rough and compact granular structure of alumina substrate. Nanoporous NiO film is formed by an agglomeration of small grains with different shapes while they are created on every alumina grain.

In this paper, experimental results are presented on the deposition of colloidal gold nanoparticles on the surfaces of TiO2prepared on silicon/silicon dioxide. Important procedures, such as titanium dioxide surface hydrophilization as well as functionalization by an organosilane coupling agent (3-aminopropyl) trimethoxysilane and (3-mercaptopropyl) trimethoxysilane were investigated in order to obtain a metal oxide surface with the most convenient properties for immobilization of gold nanoparticles having a dense and uniform distribution. TiO2nanotips prepared by reactive ion etching of oxide surface covered with self-mask gold nanoparticles are demonstrated.

Patterning of metal oxide nanostructures with different shapes and well-defined size may play an important role in the improvement of MEMS systems, sensors and optical devices. We investigated the effects of HSQ e-beam resist processing on the fabrication of sputtered TiO2nanostructures. They were patterned using direct write e-beam lithography combined with ICP-RIE etching in CF4/Ar plasma. Experimental results confirmed that the HSQ resist with a thickness of about 600 nm is suitable as a masking material for optimal etching process and allows patterning of the dots array in TiO2sputtered films with a thickness up 150 nm. TiO2arrays with a minimal dots diameter of 180 nm and spacing of 1000 nm were successfully developed.