Metal Oxide Nanostructures and Their Gas Sensing Properties: A Review

Sensors

Yu-Feng Sun²  Shao-Bo Liu¹  Fan-Li Meng³  Jin-Yun Liu³  Zhen Jin³  Ling-Tao Kong³ 

[1] Wuhu Returned Overseas Students’ Enterprise Park, Wuhu 241000, China; E-Mail:;Department of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering, Anhui Polytechnic University, Wuhu 241000, China; E-Mail:;Research Center for Biomimetic Functional Materials and Sensing Devices, Institute of Intelligent Machines, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei 230031, China; E-Mails:

关键词: metal oxide;    gas sensing;    nanostructure;    size effect;    doping;   

DOI  :  10.3390/s120302610

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Metal oxide gas sensors are predominant solid-state gas detecting devices for domestic, commercial and industrial applications, which have many advantages such as low cost, easy production, and compact size. However, the performance of such sensors is significantly influenced by the morphology and structure of sensing materials, resulting in a great obstacle for gas sensors based on bulk materials or dense films to achieve highly-sensitive properties. Lots of metal oxide nanostructures have been developed to improve the gas sensing properties such as sensitivity, selectivity, response speed, and so on. Here, we provide a brief overview of metal oxide nanostructures and their gas sensing properties from the aspects of particle size, morphology and doping. When the particle size of metal oxide is close to or less than double thickness of the space-charge layer, the sensitivity of the sensor will increase remarkably, which would be called “small size effect”, yet small size of metal oxide nanoparticles will be compactly sintered together during the film coating process which is disadvantage for gas diffusion in them. In view of those reasons, nanostructures with many kinds of shapes such as porous nanotubes, porous nanospheres and so on have been investigated, that not only possessed large surface area and relatively mass reactive sites, but also formed relatively loose film structures which is an advantage for gas diffusion. Besides, doping is also an effective method to decrease particle size and improve gas sensing properties. Therefore, the gas sensing properties of metal oxide nanostructures assembled by nanoparticles are reviewed in this article. The effect of doping is also summarized and finally the perspectives of metal oxide gas sensor are given.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2012 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland