Hydrothermal synthesized ZnO/SnWO4 nanocomposite for triethylamine sensing

Abstract

In this paper, a simple hydrothermal method was used to prepare pure SnWO4 nanostructures and composite ZnO/SnWO4 nanostructures. The micromorphology, combination method, specific surface area, pore size distribution and element distribution of SnWO4 and ZnO/SnWO4 materials were tested through XRD, SEM, TEM, BET, XPS and other characterization methods. The results show that we successfully synthesized uniformly distributed SnWO4 nanosheets and ZnO/SnWO4 nanospheres. Two samples were applied to gas sensing tests. Experiments have shown that SnWO4 nanosheets with a hydrothermal time of 12 h have optimal gas-sensing properties. However, compared with pure SnWO4 material, ZnO/SnWO4 composite material shows better gas-sensing properties to triethylamine (increased from 18.58 to 118.54), faster response and recovery time (from 18 s to 11 s–13 s and 9 s), and the optimal temperature closer to room temperature (from 240 °C to 160 °C). In summary, the nanomaterials prepared in this article have great application potential in sensor applications and their future development, and this experiment also provides a convenient method to reduce the operating temperature of the sensor and improve the response value.