Highly sensitive acetic acid gas sensor based on coral-like and Y-doped SnO2 nanoparticles prepared by electrospinning

Abstract

Porous coral-like pure and Y-doped SnO2 nanoparticles were fabricated by electrospinning method and calcination procedure. The porous coral-like SnO2 nanostructure and morphology were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive X-ray detector (EDX), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The results indicated that the coral-like structure was composed of SnO2 nanoparticles, and Y-doped SnO2 nanoparticles had smaller particle size of about 6nm. The response of coral-like Y-doped SnO2 based sensor was higher than pure SnO2 for the same acetic acid concentration. These results demonstrate that the coral-like Y-doped SnO2 nanoparticles can be used as the sensing material for fabricating high performance acetic acid sensors. The acetic acid sensing mechanism of SnO2 rectangular nanoparticles was also investigated.