Abstract
The present paper reports novel approach of surfactant and template free aqueous hydrothermal growth of 1D ZnO nanostructures, which facilitates the generation of large scale, low cost, and moderate working temperature films with controlled morphology for NO2 gas sensor application. Gas sensing properties of 1D ZnO nanostructures were studied at various temperatures for different reducing and oxidizing gases. As-fabricated by 1D ZnO nanostructures showed the highest sensor response of 11,791% with rapid response time of 9 s and recovery time of 220 s towards 100 ppm NO2. Moreover, for 5 ppm NO2 concentration, sensor showed a significant response of 70% with an response time of 16 s and recovery time of 200 s. The sensor shows good continuous performance in terms of response, response time, and recovery time, indicating that the sensor is highly reproducible and stable as well. This study successfully employed 1D ZnO nanostructures based NO2 sensing within the higher (100 ppm) and lower exposure limit (5 ppm) of NO2 gas.
Highlights
The World Health Organization (WHO) has accredited that the air pollution is a main environmental health problem affecting everyone in developed and developing countries alike
All peaks found for the samples could be assigned to this reference card and, no noticeable diffraction peaks arising from other phases, suggesting the formation of impurity free ZnO
When comparing the X-ray diffraction (XRD) patterns, a significant over-expression of the crystal growth along (002) was obvious for the samples synthesized at 150 °C and 170 °C but not at 160 °C; a similar behavior was observed elsewhere [31,32,33,34]
Summary
The World Health Organization (WHO) has accredited that the air pollution is a main environmental health problem affecting everyone in developed and developing countries alike. On the other hand in gas-phase synthesis techniques involve strict experimental conditions like high temperature, vacuum techniques, and the presence of a catalyst, and sometimes poisonous gases This involves either highenergy consumption or a relatively high cost for gas-phase based approaches. We report a one-step simple, cost effective, surfactant free and template-less hydrothermal technique for developing sensing material of ZnO nanostructures. These 1D ZnO nanorods have shown ultrafast sensitivity (11,791%), response time (9 s) and recovery time (220 s) for 100 ppm concentration NO2 and for 5 ppm NO2 concentration the significant response of 36% with average response time of 16 s and recovery time of 200 s. Prepared 1D ZnO sensor gratify eventual goal of manufacture functional nanomaterials for realistic and practical applications in terms of low cost and large scale material synthesis which fulfill the magnificent challenges of nanotechnology
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
