Researchers from the National University of Singapore proposed an alternative way to increase the sensitivity of these nanowires – by lowering the nominal carrier concentration in the as-grown nanowires. The researchers found that the conductance of these nanowires can be lowered by treating them to oxidizing gas plasma.
As a proof-of-concept, they demonstrated that a ZnO nanowire device that was subjected to an oxygen plasma treatment, thereby having a reduced carrier concentration, exhibitedd a gas sensitivity improvement of approximately four times towards 0.75% ammonia gas sensing. This improvement was attributed to a lower carrier concentration in the ZnO nanowires and a higher availability of O2– ions on the nanowire surface, which enables a more effective NH3 to O2– interaction during gas sensing, as inferred from the X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis results. Details of this work have been reported in Nanotechnology 19 205502.
The authors believe that this concept could potentially be applicable to other types of nanowire gas sensors as well.
1 comment
Comments on this article are now closed.
Comments on this article are now closed.