Abstract
In recent years, owing to the significant applications of health monitoring, wearable electronic devices such as smart watches, smart glass and wearable cameras have been growing rapidly. Gas sensor is an important part of wearable electronic devices for detecting pollutant, toxic, and combustible gases. However, in order to apply to wearable electronic devices, the gas sensor needs flexible, transparent, and working at room temperature, which are not available for traditional gas sensors. Here, we for the first time fabricate a light-controlling, flexible, transparentand working at room-temperature ethanol gas sensor by using commercial ZnO nanoparticles. The fabricated sensor not only exhibits fast and excellent photoresponse, but also shows high sensing response to ethanol under UV irradiation. Meanwhile, its transmittance exceeds 62% in the visible spectral range, and the sensing performance keeps the same even bent it at a curvature angle of 90o. Additionally, using commercial ZnO nanoparticles provides a facile and low-cost route to fabricate wearable electronic devices.
Highlights
For operating at room temperature, some techniques like noble metals such as Au13 and Pd14 modified nanomaterials has been confirmed to have potential to greatly enhance the sensitivity and decrease working temperatures of traditional gas sensors
When ZnO nanoparticles are exposed to air in the dark, the adsorbed oxygen molecules trapping electrons from the conduction band of ZnO and transferring as O2−(O2 + e− → O2−)[31] at room-temperature, resulting in the presenceof a low-conductivity depletion region in the surface layer and narrow the conductionchannels in ZnO
As the large adsorption energy, the oxygen ion (O2−) is thermally stable and difficult to be removed from the ZnO surface at room temperature[32], and cannot reacted with ethanol molecules
Summary
For operating at room temperature, some techniques like noble metals such as Au13 and Pd14 modified nanomaterials has been confirmed to have potential to greatly enhance the sensitivity and decrease working temperatures of traditional gas sensors. In terms of flexibility and transparency, among the various interesting materials used for substrates, PET coat ITO (PET-ITO) exhibit excellent dielectric properties, outstanding chemical stability, highly flexible and nearly transparent, have been widely used as flexible transparent substrates[19,20,21,22] In this contribution, using a simple and cost effective drop-casting method to coat commercial ZnO nanoparticles on the flexible and transparent PET-ITO substrate, we for the first time fabricate a UV-light controlled, flexible, transparentand working at room-temperature ethanolgas sensor ethanol sensor. The sensing performance keeps the same even bent it at a curvature angle of 90° These results demonstrate that the fabricated ethanol gas sensor could be expected for applicable to wearable device
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