Superior Hydrogen Sensing Property of Porous NiO/SnO(2) Nanofibers Synthesized via Carbonization

In this paper, the porous NiO/SnO(2) nanofibers were synthesized via the electrospinning method along with the carbonization process. The characterization results show that the pristine SnO(2)-based nanofibers can form porous structure with different grain size by carbonization. The hydrogen gas-sensing investigations indicate that the NiO/SnO(2) sensor exhibits more prominent sensing properties than those of pure SnO(2) sensor devices. Such enhanced performance is mainly attributed to the porous nanostructure, which can provide large active adsorption sites for surface reaction. Moreover, the existence of p-n heterojunctions between NiO and SnO(2) also plays a key role in enhancing gas-sensing performances. Finally, the H(2) sensing mechanism based on the NiO/SnO(2) nanocomposite was proposed for developing high-performance gas sensor devices.