Highly sensitive acetic acid gas sensor based on coral-like and Y-doped SnO2 nanoparticles prepared by electrospinning

Porous coral-like pure and Y-doped SnO2 nanoparticles were fabricated by electrospinning method and calcination procedure. The porous coral-like SnO2 nanostructure and morphology were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), energy dispersive X-ray detector (EDX), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The results indicated that the coral-like structure was composed of SnO2 nanoparticles, and Y-doped SnO2 nanoparticles had smaller particle size of about 6 nm. The response of coral-like Y-doped SnO2 based sensor was higher than pure SnO2 for the same acetic acid concentration. These results demonstrate that the coral-like Y-doped SnO2 nanoparticles can be used as the sensing material for fabricating high performance acetic acid sensors. The acetic acid sensing mechanism of SnO2 rectangular nanoparticles was also investigated. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.