In this work, we report an ultrasensitive hydrogen (H2) sensor based on tungsten trioxide (WO3) nanorods decorated with platinum (Pt) nanoparticles. WO3 nanorods were fabricated by dc magnetron sputtering with a glancing angle deposition (GLAD) technique, and decorations of Pt nanoparticles were performed by normal dc sputtering on WO3 nanorods with varying deposition time from 2.5 to 15 s. Crystal structures, morphologies, and chemical information on Pt-decorated WO3 nanorods were characterized by grazing-incident X-ray diffraction, field-emission scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, and photoelectron spectroscopy, respectively. The effect of the Pt nanoparticles on the H2-sensing performance of WO3 nanorods was investigated over a low concentration range of 150-3000 ppm of H2 at 150-350 °C working temperatures. The results showed that the H2 response greatly increased with increasing Pt-deposition time up to 10 s but then substantially deteriorated as the deposition time increased further. The optimally decorated Pt-WO3 nanorod sensor exhibited an ultrahigh H2 response from 1530 and 214,000 to 150 and 3000 ppm of H2, respectively, at 200 °C. The outstanding gas-sensing properties may be attributed to the excellent dispersion of fine Pt nanoparticles on WO3 nanorods having a very large effective surface area, leading to highly effective spillover of molecular hydrogen through Pt nanoparticles onto the WO3 nanorod surface.

Here we have demonstrated the special technique so called gas-timing (GT) rf magnetron sputtering which allow us to control a texture orientation of Ag thin films without applying any additional energy sources.

Here we demonstrate the controllability on morphology of hydrothermal ZnO nanowires through the critical concentration for nucleation. When Zn ion concentration is relatively low, the nucleation process preferentially occurs on the (0001) plane, promoting nanowire growth. In contrast, for relatively high Zn ion concentration, the (101¯0) plane emerges, suppressing nanowire growth. The occurrence of this nucleation competition on the crystal planes as a function of concentration is caused by differences in the critical nucleation sizes between the (0001) plane and the (101¯0) plane. Furthermore, we found that the density of ZnO nanowires trend to decrease with increasing the growth time due to the lateral growth effect. Photoluminescence measurement of ZnO nanowires exhibited that the near band emission peak of 380 nm decreased with decreasing nanowire diameter while the broad emission peak below band gap appears the opposite trend because of surface to volume ratio effect.

Synchrotron x-ray absorption near edge structures (XANES) measurements of In L3 edge is used in conjunction with first principles calculations to characterize rf magnetron sputtered indium oxynitride at different O contents. Good agreement between the measured and the independently calculated spectra are obtained. Calculations show that the XANES spectra of this alloy are sensitive to the coordination numbers of the In atoms, i.e., fourfold for indium nitride-like structures and sixfold for indium oxide-like structures, but not to the substitution of nearest neighbor N by O or vice versa.