Temperature and doping effects on performance of titania thin film lambda probe

The aim of this work is to carry out a performance comparison between a commercial Bosch Lambda probe and a sol-gel TiO2 thin film deposited on alumina substrates. Actually, zirconia-based lambda probes are a well-established technology in the field of combustion control in fuel injection engines. An experimental bench was realized in order to perform the contemporary data acquisition of a Bosch lambda probe Mod. LSF 4.2 and TiO2 thin film sensors. The signals of both the sensors are acquired with an electrometer with a scanner card on real gasoline engine. Fast response time is observed from TiO2 sol-gel sensor, while best results were obtained from first experimental data on Pt-doped devices, that outline that the response time was comparable with the commercial probe.