Copolymer-assisted fabrication of rambutan-like SnO2 hierarchical nanostructure with enhanced sensitivity for n-butanol

In this paper, rambutan-like SnO2 hierarchical nanostructure assembled with a number of nanosheets has been successfully prepared through a facile hydrothermal route with the synergistic effect of block copolymer F127 (EO106-PO70-EO106) and Na3C6H5O7. The structure and morphology were characterized by TEM, SEM, XRD, IR and BET techniques. The formation of SnO2 architecture underwent the nucleation, oriented growth and a phase transformation process. Besides that, Ag/SnO2 products with different amounts of Ag doping were also obtained. As gas -sensing materials, both SnO2 and Ag/SnO2 products demonstrated sensitive and selective response to several hazardous gases, especially for n-butanol at a low work temperature of 140 degrees C compared with the commercial SnO2. Significantly, the Ag/SnO2 product with 5 wt% Ag doping exhibited the most excellent gas sensing proprieties of 44.3-100 ppm n-butanol at 140 degrees C with a fast response and recovery time of 8/5s. The improvement may on account of their unique nanostructures, large surface areas and the decoration of Ag nanoparticles. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.