1984 Volume 5 Issue Special Pages 284-286
Recently, in this country, town gas and LPG have come into wide use as fuel, giving us clean energy in burning. These gases have, however, potential hazards that might cause explosion when they leak out accidentally or mistakenly. To cope with such the risk, gas sensors have been put into practical application and thusspread quickly. These are two kinds of practical gas sensors, semiconductor gas sensor and catalytic combustion type gas sensor. Although they are both working well at present, further improvement would be necessary because their gas sensing capabilities are required to be steady and stable in a long run even under severe environmental stresses, and they should not be supposed to make any wrong alarms. This paper is intended to report on analysis of the chemical mechanism of the interaction between the sensors and fuel gases, and also some physical property changes observed at the sensor surfaces, as acted upon by both the fuel gases and environmental stresses, such as temperature, humidity, miscellaneous gasses, and so on.