Morphology-driven gas sensing by fabricated fractals: A review

Abstract

Fractals are intriguing structures that repeat themselves at various length scales. Interestingly, fractals can also be fabricated artificially in labs under controlled growth environments and be explored for various applications. Such fractals have a repeating unit that spans in length from nano- to millimeter range. Fractals thus can be regarded as connectors that structurally bridge the gap between the nano- and the macroscopic worlds and have a hybrid structure of pores and repeating units. This article presents a comprehensive review on inorganic fabricated fractals (fab-fracs) synthesized in labs and employed as gas sensors across materials, morphologies, and gas analytes. The focus is to investigate the morphology-driven gas response of these fab-fracs and identify key parameters of fractal geometry in influencing gas response. Fab-fracs with roughened microstructure, pore-network connectivity, and fractal dimension (D) less than 2 are projected to be possessing better gas sensing capabilities. Fab-fracs with these salient features will help in designing the commercial gas sensors with better performance.