Highly volatile dimethylamine vapour sensing studies using titanium-vanadium mixed oxide thin films

Monitoring the highly volatile dimethylamine (DMA) vapour pays an important issue for the health and safety of humans. The atomization requires an electronic nose for detecting and controlling the toxic gases in the environment. The binary metal oxides of Titanium dioxide (TiO2) and Vanadium oxide (VOx) have been used for gas/vapour sensing applications for the past few decades. However, the binary metal oxides have low selectivity and sensitivity issues in real-time applications. Therefore, mixed metal oxides are attractive alternates for gas sensing application. The mixed metal oxide TiO2-VOx thin film was deposited by reactive co-sputtering technique and investigated for their structural, morphological, and sensing properties. For the first time, we report the DMA vapour sensing properties of TiO2-VOx at room temperature. Among many vapours, such as methanol, ethanol, formaldehyde, isopropanol, acetone, and DMA, the TiO2-VOx is highly selective towards DMA than the other binary oxides VOx and TiO2. The DMA vapour sensing studies proves that the deposited mixed metal-oxide had better sensing response of similar to 3.6 to a minimum concentration of 10 ppm at room temperature than binary oxides of VOx and TiO2. (C) 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

The TiO2-VOx mixed metal oxide thin film deposited by reactive co-sputtering technique shows higher selectivity and sensitivity towards DMA vapor compared to binary oxides VOx and TiO2.