Hierarchical SnO₂ Nanostructures Made of Intermingled Ultrathin Nanosheets for Environmental Remediation, Smart Gas Sensor, and Supercapacitor Applications

Abstract

In this paper, the hierarchical SnO2 nanostructures (HTNs) were prepared by a facile hydrothermal process. The prepared HTNs were characterized in detail by various analytical techniques that reveal the well-crystallinity with tetragonal rutile structure of SnO2 for the as-prepared material. By detailed experiments, interestingly, it was observed that the shapes and sizes of as-prepared HTNs could be tailored by varying the precursor concentration and reaction time. The synthesized HTNs were used as the efficient photocatalysts for the photocatalytic degradation of methylene blue (MB) under light illumination which showed almost complete degradation (∼99%) of MB dye in 20 min. The observed degradation for MB dye was higher than other commonly used dyes, i.e. methyl orange (MO; 96% in 50 min) and Rhodamine B (RhB; 97% in 40 min.). Further, the prepared HTNs were used as the effective gas sensing material to examine a series of volatile gases, such as ethanol, ammonia, benzene, acetone, toluene, methanol, diethyl ether, and methanol. By the detailed experiments, it was observed that the prepared HTNs exhibited tremendous gas sensing performance toward ethanol. Finally, because of the unique morphology and the fast ion and electron transfer characteristics, the prepared HTNs show excellent supercapacitor performances.

Controlled synthesis of SnO2 hierarchical architectures made of ultrathin nanoflakes for enhanced ethanol gas sensing properties

“…However the recovery time is all as short as 1-2 s. Table 2 has summarized the gas sensing characteristics of SnO 2 gas sensors reported in other literature. It is prominent that the sensor synthesized in the present work displays higher response relative to those reported in other literature [6,29,30]. These indicate that the as-prepared SnO 2 nanostructures assembled with numerous tiny nanolamella filled in the interspace of ultrathin nanoflakes could be a competitive candidate for gas sensing detection.…”

“…The response of all sensors first increased up to 130 mA with current. The optimum operating current is not consistent with the literature (120 mA) [6]. In the following experiments, 130 mA was chosen as the optimum operating current to further investigate more gas sensing properties.…”

“…Binary metal oxides, such as ZnO, SnO 2 , W 2 O 3 , V 2 O 5 , have excellent properties and are now widely used as transparent conducting oxide materials [1], lithium-ion batteries [2][3][4][5], gas sensors [6,7], supercapacitors [6], and sensitized solar cells [8]. Among various metal oxide nanomaterials, tin dioxide (SnO 2 ) is one of the smart materials due to their good stability, nontoxicity, low cost, and these also allow for its reliable commercial application.…”

Construction of Hierarchical Ni(OH)2@CoMoO4 Nanoflake Composite for High-Performance Supercapacitors

“…The cyclic stability was evaluated by cyclic voltammetry measurements at a current density of 8 mA cm À2 for over 1000 cycles. The areal capacitances were calculated according to the following equation 33,38 :…”

Facile Hydrothermal Synthesis of SnO2 Nanospheres as Photocatalysts

“…Nowadays, with quick development of the industry and the improvement of people's life, environmental pollution has become one of the most serious problems [1][2][3]. Therefore, it is urgent to find effective solutions for these issues.…”