A Graphene-Based Thermal Conductivity Detector for Low Power Gas Detection

The paper reports the fabrication and testing results of a graphene-based thermal conductivity detector (TCD) by taking advantages of ultra low mass, large surface area and high thermal conductivity of a multilayer graphene (MLG) for low power gas detection. The fabricated TCD consists of a transferred and thus suspended MLG across a micro channel where target gases flow through. The sophisticated transfer process was successfully performed to construct a relatively large free-standing MLG membrane with a footprint of 75×3,600 um
²
. The fabricated TCD, when connected to a micro gas chromatography (μGC) column, demonstrated the chromatographic detection of pentane, hexane and heptane gases with a limit of detection (LOD) of 4760 ppm of pentane, while consuming only 26 mW.