Highly sensitive and room temperature detection of ultra-low concentrations of O 3 using self-powered sensing elements of Cu 2 O nanocubes.
E PetromichelakiE GagaoudakisK MoschovisLeonidas TsetserisThomas D AnthopoulosG KiriakidisVassilios D BinasPublished in: Nanoscale advances (2019)
The fundamental development of the design of novel self-powered ozone sensing elements, operating at room temperature, based on p-type metal oxides paves the way to a new class of low cost, highly promising gas sensing devices. In this work, p-type Cu 2 O nanocubes were synthesized by a simple solution-based method and tested as a self-powered ozone sensing element, at room temperature (25 °C) for the first time. Highly crystalline Cu 2 O nanocubes with 30 nm size were characterized by X-ray Diffraction (XRD), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM). Self-powered sensing elements of Cu 2 O nanocubes have been successfully fabricated by deposition of Cu 2 O nanocubes on interdigitated electrodes (IDEs) consisting of two connection tracks with 500 digits and a gap of 5 μm in order to investigate their response to ozone at room temperature. The experimental results showed that the use of nanocubes as sensing elements was suitable for detecting ultra-low concentrations of O 3 down to 10 ppb at room temperature with very high sensitivity (28%) and a very low response/recovery time. The reversible sensing process of the relatively weak binding of O 3 species by trapping sites on Cu 2 O facets with increased oxygen content was studied by using density functional theory (DFT) calculations.
Keyphrases
- room temperature
- electron microscopy
- density functional theory
- ionic liquid
- high resolution
- low cost
- molecular dynamics
- aqueous solution
- hydrogen peroxide
- metal organic framework
- particulate matter
- molecular dynamics simulations
- magnetic resonance imaging
- mass spectrometry
- molecular docking
- label free
- quantum dots
- single molecule
- reduced graphene oxide