Preliminary Study of WO<sub>3</sub> Nanostructures Produced via Facile Hydrothermal Synthesis Process for CO<sub>2</sub> Sensing

Abstract

Tungsten trioxide (WO3) nanostructure with aspect ratio of 20 (length/diameter) have been successfully synthesized by single step hydrothermal reaction at moderate temperature of 180 °C. The crystal structure and morphology evolution are characterized by SEM and Raman while the carbon dioxide (CO2) sensing capability was tested by simple sensor fabrication .It was observed that the nanorods were initially coalesce in bundles before breaking up loosely towards the end of the hydrothermal process. A response measurement reveals that the sensor was able to detect CO2 at room temperature with the sensitivity around 13ohm/100 ppm. The detection performance of such nanostructure provides a positive indication that it can be a competitive sensor element candidate not only for CO2 applications in particular but can be expanded to other gas sensing application such as O2, C2H4 and NO2.