Hydrogen chemoresistive sensor for the analysis of gut health

Hydrogen is a target gas in the assessment of gut health. Several are the approaches to estimate the concentration of this gas, endogenously present in the gut and, of course, in the blood and the exhaled breath. In this paper, development and characterization of a resistive gas sensor for hydrogen monitoring is reported. The sensing material is based on Nb2O5 Pt thin films, obtained by depositing a niobium oxide layer and a platinum one on a tiny alumina substrate, by means of a lab-scale plasma sputtering reactor. The deposited layers were treated with a thermal process at 600 °C for 30 min. The developed devices were characterized in a hydrogen concentration range of 2000 ppm to 80000 ppm, showing promising results.