Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect Materials Today: Proceedings 5 (2018) 9817–9825 www.materialstoday.com/proceedings 2214-7853 © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and/or Peer-review under responsibility of International Conference on Functional Nano-Materials, 2016. IC-FNM 2016 Development of Fullerene Modified Metal Oxide Thick Films for Moisture Sensing Application Debdulal Saha* and Sagnik Das Sensor and Actuator Division, CSIR-Central Glass & Ceramic Research Institute, 196, Raja S.C. Mullick Road, Jadavpur, Kolkata-700 032, India. Abstract Trace moisture sensing capability of fullerene (C 60 ) modified nanoporous -alumina (Al 2 O 3 ) thick films has been presented here. Fullerene was added to create nano pore in aluminum secondary butoxide for preparation of gel tape cast thick films. One of the major advantages of using fullerene is to develop oriented nano pores (2-12 nm) throughout the ceramic thick films. The green thick films were crack free which was cast by gel tape casting process. The porosity and surface area were studied using field effect scanning electron microscope, atomic force microscope and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller. Gamma phase of alumina was also examined by X-ray diffraction analysis. The green thick films were sintered at 900 ° C to obtain nanopore distribution through the surface of the thick films. Electrical characterization such as sensitivity, response, recovery and hysteresis were performed. There is no literature report on the detection of trace moisture sensor by fullerene assisted alumina sol gel tape cast process. This article explains the development of moisture sensor which can detect low range moisture (1-25 ppm) in different industrial application like gas industry, dielectric oil and drying of different food processing industry etc. © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and/or Peer-review under responsibility of International Conference on Functional Nano-Materials, 2016. Keywords: Fullerene; Sol-gel; Moisture sensor; -alumina thick film; Nano pore; Dielectric layer. 1. Introduction Porous alumina was an important material for wide application area such as catalyst, [1-3] insulator, [4, 5] sensor [6- 10] and membrane templates [11, 12]. Fullerene is an allotrope of carbon which is a unique material with high potential application in bio-engineering, bio-medical and tissue engineering [13-16]. Fullerene is hydrophobic in nature and does not dispersed in water medium. Corresponding author. Tel: +91 9432674860 E-mail address: debdulal@cgcri.res.in