Highly sensitive, ambient temperature CO sensor using tin oxide based composites

Abstract

In the present work, we report an excellent gas sensing performance of the unique nanocomposite films prepared with the help of different materials such as semiconductor metal-oxide, polymer and metal for carbon monoxide gas sensing at ambient temperature. The fabrication of SnO2/PANI/Pd nanocomposite film was performed using the hydrothermal route. The fabricated films were characterized with various analytical techniques such as X-ray diffraction (XRD), Field emission scanning electron microscope (FESEM), and Raman spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) etc. Furthermore, DFT results are used to examine the transport and electronic properties of all prepared films. The computing results show that after hybridizing with Pd and SnO2, the response of the fabricated SnO2 and polyaniline (PANI) films to CO gas molecules is considerably improved. At room temperature, sensing characterization of the fabricated sensing films was carried out by using target gas concentrations with varying ppm level of 50–300. At ambient temperature, the SnO2/PANI/Pd film has the maximum sensitivity ~ 400.8% out of all the fabricated films at 0.3% of the target gas. Our findings show that SnO2, SnO2/Pd, PANI, and SnO2/PANI/Pd composite sensing films have a bright future in the gas sensing application with incredibly-higher sensitivity towards CO gas.