Sensing of benzene, toluene and xylene gases using resistive-based gas sensors.

Gas sensors are indispensable for detecting harmful gases in the environment. The morphology of a gas sensor significantly affects its sensing performance. Among the various morphologies, one-dimensional nanowires (NWs) have numerous advantages, such as high surface area, small dimensions, high charge-carrier concentrations, facile synthesis, high crystallinity, and stability. These excellent properties make NWs promising for gas sensing. Resistive-type metal oxide-based gas sensors are widely used for monitoring various toxic gases and volatile organic compounds. In this tutorial, the synthesis of metal oxide NWs, the fabrication of gas sensors, and their sensing mechanisms are discussed. Different types of NW-based gas sensors, such as single NWs, branched NWs, noble metal-functionalized NWs, heterojunction NWs, self-heating NWs, ultraviolet-activated NWs, core–shell NWs, and electronic-nose-based NWs, are comprehensively presented. Finally, we discuss future directions with regard to the improvement and potential of these NW gas sensors. This tutorial aims to provide an overview of the fundamental principle and state-of-the-art technology, which is useful for researchers and students working in the field of resistive-type NW-based gas sensors.

Nitrogen (N)-doped graphene with different atomic percentages (2.3–4.7 at%) of N has been synthesized by thermal annealing of reduced graphene oxide (RGO) in ammonia gas for different times. The effects of annealing time on the structure, electrical and optical properties of N-doped graphene have been systematically investigated by using various analytical techniques. XPS, FTIR, Raman, and XRD studies show that there is a gradual structural change in N-doped graphene sheets with increasing annealing time, resulting from the increase of carbon and simultaneous decrease of oxygen and N contents. High resolution N1s spectra reveal that the pyridine-N and pyrrolic-N contents decrease with increasing annealing time, whereas the amount of quaternary-N increases. Importantly, it has been found that the annealing time caused significant changes in both the electrical and the optical properties of N-doped graphene. The electrical resistance of N-doped graphene is greatly reduced compared to that of GO and RGO, and found to further decrease with increasing annealing time, possibly due to the increase of sp² carbon networks and decrease of oxygen content as well as defects associated with the incorporation of N. The room-temperature photoluminescence (PL) properties of graphene oxide (GO), RGO and N-doped graphene were systematically studied with regard to the annealing time. The results showed that the PL spectrum of GO exhibits a peak emission maximum at around 700 nm, while that of RGO is found to be strongly blue-shifted with two distinct emission peaks: green emission at 485–500 nm and blue emission at 420–428 nm. For N-doped graphene samples, the blue emission intensity could significantly be enhanced by controlling the annealing time, which leads to a promising blue and green light-emitting material with controllable optical properties.