Abstract
Present paper consists of the study of arsenic-based chalcogenide thin film for sensing elements for humidity sensors. The chemical composition of the prepared sensing element makes it more sensitive towards water molecule absorption and hence affects sensitivity. The bulk samples of Ge-Se-Te-As composition were prepared using the conventional melt-quench technique and the thin films were obtained using the thermal evaporation method. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were used to analyze the structural characteristics of the prepared sensing element. Tauc's plot, using UV-Vis spectrophotometer data, was used to determine the optical bandgap of the sensing materials. The relative humidity (RH) variation of the prepared sensing element was recorded in the range of 10%-90%. The sensitivity of the prepared sensing membrane was obtained as 8.54 M Omega/%RH, 9.724 M Omega/%RH, 10.257 M Omega/%RH for x = 10, 20, 30 respectively. The repeatability of the prepared samples was also reported to increase with Arsenic concentration.