The Effect of Sheet Resistivity and Storage Conditions on Sensitivity of RuO2 Based pH Sensors

The increasing fresh water deficiency due to environmental pollution demands accurate, reliable and highly sensitive sensors for online monitoring of water pollution. Solid state sensors are helpful for fabricating and implementing low cost wireless sensors for monitoring of pollution. In water pollution determination, the measurement of pH plays an important role. Among the semiconductor sensitive materials RuO2 shows good sensitivity to hydrogen ions, high accuracy and resistance to interferences caused by other dissolved ions. In this work, thick film RuO2 based pH sensitive electrodes are fabricated by screen printing. The sensors were characterized by electromotive force measurements, SEM, optical microscopy and EDS analysis. The effects of sheet resistivity of the material and storage conditions are discussed. The sensor exhibits a sensitivity of 60 mV/pH in wide pH range of 2 to 10. The obtained response was very close to the theoretical Nernstian behavior. The best performance was attained for a sensor fabricated from 10 k Omega/sq. thick film paste and stored at water for 25 days.