Vu Van Quang

Outstanding gas-sensing performance of graphene/SnO2 nanowire Schottky junctions

Schottky junctions (SJ) are considered devices for sensing applications due to their unique properties. Herein, we report on the design, facile fabrication, and outstanding NO2 gas sensing properties of monolayer graphene (GP)/SnO2 nanowire (NW) SJ devices. The devices were prepared by directly growing single crystal SnO2 NWs on interdigitated Pt electrodes via thermal evaporation, followed by transferring a GP layer grown by chemical vapor deposition on top of the NW chip. The SJ-based sensor showed a reversible response to NO2 gas at concentrations of ppb levels with detection limits of about 0.024 ppb at a low operating temperature of 150 °C and bias voltage (1 V) with a response/recovery time of less than 50 s. The outstanding gas-sensing characteristics of the device were attributed to tuning the Schottky barrier height and barrier width at the tiny area of contact between GP and SnO2 NW through the adsorption/desorption of gas molecules.

Scalable Fabrication of High-Performance NO2 Gas Sensors Based on Tungsten Oxide Nanowires by On-Chip Growth and RuO2-Functionalization

The on-chip growth and surface-functionalization have been recently regarded as promising techniques for large-scale fabrication of high performance nanowires gas sensors. Here we demonstrate a good NO2 gas-sensing performance of the tungsten oxide nanowires (TONWs) sensors realized by scalable on-chip fabrication and RuO2-functionalization. The gas response (Rg/Ra) of the RuO2-functionalized TONWs to 5 ppm of NO2 was 186.1 at 250 °C, which increased up to ∼18.6-fold compared with that of the bare TONWs. On the contrary, the responses of the bare and functionalized sensors to 10 ppm of NH3, 10 ppm of H2S and 10 ppm of CO gases were very low of about 1.5, indicating the good selectivity. In addition, the TONW sensors fabricated by the on-chip growth technique exhibited a good reversibility up to 7 cycles switching from air-to-gas with a response of 19.8 ± 0.033 (to 1 ppm of NO2), and this value was almost the same (about 19.5 ± 0.027) for 11 cycles after three months storage in laboratory condition. The response and selectivity enhancement of RuO2-functionalzied TONWs sensors was attributed to the variation of electron depletion layer due to the formation of RuO2/TONWs Schottky junctions and/or the promotion of more adsorption sites for NO2 gas molecule on the surface of TONWs, whereas the good reversibility was attributed to the formation of the stable monoclinic WO3 from the single crystal of monoclinic W18O49 after annealing at 600 °C.