Direct growth of the multi-walled carbon nanotubes as a tool to detect ammonia at room temperature

Abstract

In this work, we report on the application of multi-walled carbon nanotubes as gas sensors. We use the vertical growth of aligned carbon nanotubes on structure surfaces composed by a set of Ni electrodes and SiO 2 surfaces fraction. The results show that carbon nanotubes could be efficient in terms of sensibility for detection of pollutant species like NH 3 even at ambient temperature. The determination of the adsorption energies for various species on the basis of a semi-empirical potential approach show that gases, particularly the polar one, are able to bind strongly on carbon nanotubes surfaces and could explain at least qualitatively the experimental results.