Electrospun Metal Oxide Composite Nanofibers Gas Sensors: A Review

Abstract

Nanostructured materials have attracted considerable research interest over the recent decades because of their potential applications in nanoengineering and nanotechnology. On the other hand, the developments in nanotechnology are strongly dependent on the availability of new materials with novel and engineered morphologies. Among the novel nanomaterials reported thus far, composite nanofibers (NFs) have attracted considerable attention in recent years. In particular, metal oxide NFs have great potential for the development of gas sensors. Highly sensitive and selective gas sensors can be developed by using composite NFs owing to their large surface area and abundance of grain boundaries. In composite NFs, gas sensing properties can be enhanced greatly by tailoring the conduction channel and surface properties by compositional modifications using the synergistic effects of different materials and forming heterointerfaces. This review focuses on the gas sensing properties of composite NFs synthesized by an electrospinning (ES) method. The synthesis of the composite NFs by the ES method and the sensing mechanisms involved in different types of composite NFs are presented along with the future perspectives of composite NFs.

Thermal properties of electrospun polyvinylpyrrolidone/titanium tetraisopropoxide composite nanofibers

“…The use of electrospinning allows the production of nanomaterials with diverse properties; thus, there is a wide variety of applications for them. There are examples when the electrospun nanofibers were applied in air filtration [7], photocatalysis [8,9], gas sensing [10,11], thermal energy storage [12], optical sensors [13], or for encapsulating biomaterials [14], etc.…”

Nanostructured Semiconducting Metal Oxide Gas Sensors for Acetaldehyde Detection

“…Even though such techniques are highly sensitive and accurate, they have some disadvantages for online monitoring, need expert operators, and are bulky as well as expensive. Therefore, sensitive, selective, stable, fast, portable, and simply operated sensors are greatly needed for acetaldehyde detection [6,50]. For practical applications, an acetaldehyde gas sensor should have following merits: (i) high sensitivity; (ii) high selectivity; (iii) fast dynamics; (iv) long-term stability; (v) reproducibility; (vi) low power consumption; and (vi) low cost.…”

Nanostructured Semiconducting Metal Oxide Gas Sensors for Acetaldehyde Detection

“…Traditional strategies to determine the concentration of acetaldehyde are use of gas [45]. In the remaining parts of this paper we will discuss the chemiresistive acetaldehyde gas sensors on the basis of the metal oxides used as sensing material.…”