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A Photoactivated Gas Detector for Toluene Sensing at Room Temperature Based on New Coral-Like ZnO Nanostructure Arrays

A photoactivated gas detector operated at room temperature was microfabricated using a simple hydrothermal method. We report that the photoactivated gas detector can detect toluene using a UV illumination of 2 μW/cm(2). By ultraviolet (UV) illumination, gas detectors sense toluene at room temperatur...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Yeh, Li-Ko, Luo, Jie-Chun, Chen, Min-Chun, Wu, Chih-Hung, Chen, Jian-Zhang, Cheng, I-Chun, Hsu, Cheng-Che, Tian, Wei-Cheng
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2016
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5134479/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27809222
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/s16111820
Descripción
Sumario:A photoactivated gas detector operated at room temperature was microfabricated using a simple hydrothermal method. We report that the photoactivated gas detector can detect toluene using a UV illumination of 2 μW/cm(2). By ultraviolet (UV) illumination, gas detectors sense toluene at room temperature without heating. A significant enhancement of detector sensitivity is achieved because of the high surface-area-to-volume ratio of the morphology of the coral-like ZnO nanorods arrays (NRAs) and the increased number of photo-induced oxygen ions under UV illumination. The corresponding sensitivity (ΔR/R(0)) of the detector based on coral-like ZnO NRAs is enhanced by approximately 1022% compared to that of thin-film detectors. The proposed detector greatly extends the dynamic range of detection of metal-oxide-based detectors for gas sensing applications. We report the first-ever detection of toluene with a novel coral-like NRAs gas detector at room temperature. A sensing mechanism model is also proposed to explain the sensing responses of gas detectors based on coral-like ZnO NRAs.