Hydrothermally grown 1D ZnO nanostructures for rapid detection of NO2 gas

Abstract

AbstractThe 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.