Reliable Gas Sensors using ZNO Nanostructures
Kurapati Srinivas
Dr. Kurapati Srinivas, Nanotechnology Group, Department of Physics, GMR Institute of Technology, Rajam, A.P. India
Manuscript received on August 10, 2014. | Revised Manuscript Received on August 12, 2014. | Manuscript published on August 18, 2014. | PP: 04-08 | Volume-1 Issue-9, August 2014.
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© The Authors. Published By: Blue Eyes Intelligence Engineering and Sciences Publication (BEIESP). This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Abstract: Gas sensors are devices that can convert the concentration of an analyte gas into an electronic signal. Zinc oxide (ZnO) is an important n-type metal oxide semiconductor which has been utilized as sensor for several decades. In recent years, there have been extensive investigations of nanoscale semiconductor gas sensors. The size reduction of ZnO sensors to nanometer scale provides a good opportunity to dramatically increase their sensing properties in comparison with their macro scale counterparts. Among the semiconductor metal oxides, zinc oxide (ZnO) is one of the most widely used gas sensing material. Before making any gas sensor, it is very much necessary to know the sensitivity , selectivity of the sensor and their optimization. In this paper, we present the growth of ZnO nanostructures by thermal evaporation technique and investigation of their gas sensing properties. It is observed that the sensing characteristics of single nanowires and films made using nanowires to clearly differentiate the intra grain and grain boundary contributions as well as to develop sensors with better sensitivity/ selectivity. This paper is very much useful for those who would like work on gas sensors for better gas sensing performances.
Keywords: Gas sensor, Nanowires, ZnO