LAUSR

A robust silicon carbide (SiC) microheater is used for stable low-power catalytic gas sensing at high operating temperatures, where previously developed low-power polycrystalline silicon (polysilicon) microheaters are unstable. The silicon carbide microheater has low power consumption (20 mW to reach 500 °C) and exhibits an order of magnitude lower resistance drift than the polysilicon microheater after continuously heating at 500 °C for 100 h and during temperature increases up to 650 °C. With the deposition of platinum nanoparticle-loaded boron nitride aerogel, the SiC microheater-based catalytic gas sensor detects propane with excellent long-term stability while exhibiting fast response and recovery time (~1 s). The sensitivity is not affected by humidity, nor during 10% duty cycling, which yields a power consumption of only 2 mW with frequent data collection (every 2 s). With a simple change of heater material from silicon to SiC, the microheater and resulting catalytic gas sensor element show significant performance improvement.