CO gas sensors based on p-type CuO nanotubes and CuO nanocubes: Morphology and surface structure effects on the sensing performance

Lin Hou; Chunmei Zhang; Lei Li; Cheng Du; Xiaokun Li; Xiao-Feng Kang; Wei Chen

doi:10.1016/j.talanta.2018.05.059

CO gas sensors based on p-type CuO nanotubes and CuO nanocubes: Morphology and surface structure effects on the sensing performance

Talanta. 2018 Oct 1:188:41-49. doi: 10.1016/j.talanta.2018.05.059. Epub 2018 May 18.

Authors

Lin Hou¹, Chunmei Zhang², Lei Li³, Cheng Du², Xiaokun Li⁴, Xiao-Feng Kang⁵, Wei Chen⁶

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130022, Jilin, China; College of Chemistry & Materials Science, Northwest University, Xi'an 710069, China.
² State Key Laboratory of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130022, Jilin, China; University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100039, China.
³ State Key Laboratory of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130022, Jilin, China; The College of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Changchun University of Technology, Changchun 130012, Jilin, China.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130022, Jilin, China.
⁵ College of Chemistry & Materials Science, Northwest University, Xi'an 710069, China. Electronic address: kangxf@nwu.edu.cn.
⁶ State Key Laboratory of Electroanalytical Chemistry, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun 130022, Jilin, China. Electronic address: weichen@ciac.ac.cn.

PMID: 30029395
DOI: 10.1016/j.talanta.2018.05.059

Abstract

Metal oxide nanomaterials have been widely applied in the high-performance gas sensors. For metal oxide semiconductors, high surface-to-volume ratio and the exposed crystal facets are the two key factors for determining their gas sensing performances. In order to study the effect of surface structure on the gas sensing properties, in this work, two types of copper oxide (CuO) nanostructures, CuO nanotubes (CuO NTs) with exposed surface plane of (111) and CuO nanocubes (CuO NCs) with exposed surface plane of (110), were obtained from Cu nanowires (Cu NWs) and Cu₂O nanocubes (Cu₂O NCs), respectively. The morphologies, crystal and surface structures were characterized by high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The gas-sensing performances of CuO NTs and CuO NCs for CO gas detection were then studied. The results demonstrated that compared to CuO NCs, the CuO NTs exhibited lower optimum working temperature and higher sensitivity for CO gas detection. At the operating temperature of 175 °C, the prepared CuO NTs exhibited high sensitivity, good selectivity, fast response and recovery times to CO gas. The present study indicates that for the same semiconductor sensing material, the surface crystal structure has significant influence on the sensing performance.

Keywords: Carbon monoxide; CuO nanocube; CuO nanotube; Gas sensor; Semiconductor.