Nanocrystalline tin oxide—vanadium oxide (SnO2–V2O5) nanocomposite was prepared by the hydrothermal route. Morphological and conductive atomic force microscopy studies were employed to explore the properties of the interface between the grains and grain boundaries of these binary oxides. Detailed analysis of this nanocomposite revealed that the barrier height of 0.512 eV favours a pronounced sensitivity of 63.99% towards 160 ppm of ethanol at room temperature. This might also be due to the decrease in the resistance from 2000 MΩ (individual SnO2) to 830 MΩ (nanocomposite). The synergistic effect, large surface area, greater number of interfaces and more conduction electrons provide a greater number of surface active sites for the nanocomposite. This leads to the nanocomposite showing better sensing performance than the corresponding individual systems.

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In the present investigations, the samples such as zinc oxide, tin oxide, vanadium oxide and their ternary combinations prepared by hydrothermal route were characterised using the state-of-the-art facilities and were systematically analysed. The interface properties between the grain and grain boundaries of these oxides were studied using Conductive atomic force microscopic (CAFM) studies. From the detailed investigations on topography and I-V characteristics, it is revealed that, zinc-tin-vanadium oxide nanocomposite with smaller barrier height of 0.189 eV exhibited pronounced response magnitude of 98.96 % at a faster rate of 32 s at room temperature. The outstanding ethanol sensing property of the ternary nanocomposite is attributed to the hierarchical morphology with large surface area, the formation of heterojunction at the interface, tuning the schottky barrier height, depletion layer manipulation and the electronic effects.