Investigating time-resolved response of micro thermal conductivity sensor under various modes of operation

•Different modes of operations are investigated for thermal conductivity sensors.•Different geometries of thermal conductivity sensors are tested.•Sensitivity of TCD sensors increases with power usage.•TCD sensors allow the detection of previously hard to detect, noble gases. This article provides measurements of thermal conductivity carried out on a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) structure for the application of selective gas sensing. MEMS thermal conductivity based gas sensors work by measuring the interaction of a heated polysilicon bridge with an ambient gas and sensing temperature changes. The tiny MEMS element provides an ability to measure noble gases and is especially applicable to binary mixtures. In this work we conducted experiments on the KWJ Engineering nano-powered thermal conductivity detector (TCD) elements to investigate the sensitivity of the sensor transient responses to gas composition. Measurements are made at constant power, constant resistance, and constant energy. By introducing feedback to maintain constant sensor temperature, the relative change of gas thermal conductivity with respect to temperature can be estimated and provide information about the concentration as well as insight into the composition of the gas mixture.