Zinc oxide (ZnO) is considered to be one of the most explored and reliable sensing materials for UV detection due to its excellent properties, like a wide band gap and high exciton energy. Our current study on a photodetector based on tetrapodal ZnO (t-ZnO) reported an extremely high UV response of ~9200 for 394 nm UV illumination at 25 °C. The t-ZnO network structure and morphology were investigated using XRD and SEM. The sensor showed a UV/visible ratio of ~12 at 25 °C for 394 nm UV illumination and 443 nm visible illumination. By increasing the temperature, monotonic decreases in response and recovery time were observed. By increasing the bias voltage, the response time was found to decrease while the recovery time was increased. The maximum responsivity shifted to higher wavelengths from 394 nm to 400 nm by increasing the operating temperature from 25 °C to 100 °C. The t-ZnO networks exhibited gas-sensing performances at temperatures above 250 °C, and a maximum response of ~1.35 was recorded at 350 °C with a good repeatability and fast recovery in 16 s for 100 ppm of n-butanol vapor. This study demonstrated that t-ZnO networks are good biosensors that can be used for diverse biomedical applications like the sensing of VOCs (volatile organic compounds) and ultraviolet detection under a wide range of temperatures, and may find new possibilities in biosensing applications.

The aim of this study was to develop low-powered, highly selective UV sensor to continuously monitor personalized UV exposure as well as to study annealing effect on UV detection properties of the sensors. ZnO:Al structures were obtained by chemical growth method followed by thermal annealing at 625 °C for 2 h. The studied samples exhibit maximal UV response of 620/488 at 25 °C/50 °C to 370 nm UV radiation before/after annealing, respectively. Thermal annealing of sensor (250 °C for 1 h) led to improvement in fall time from 3860 seconds to 262 seconds at 25 °C and highest responsivity (~48 mA/W) came out for 370 nm wavelength at 75 °C operating temperatures. Consequently, excellent selectivity for 370 nm UV illumination can be ascribed as due to thermal annealing effect which increases the crystallinity, grain size, and roughness of the sensing film. The PL measurements reveals the suppression of structural defects, increase in intensity after annealing and enhanced UV response due to presence of Al content in films. Overall, these structures showed magnificent UV properties, before and especially after additional thermal annealing. UV sensing mechanism of such nanomaterial-based sensor were explained with physio-chemical processes take place on the surface of these structures. The obtained results on annealed ZnO:Al films-based devices is superior to reported performances of other nanostructures, proving new results for UV sensing applications at different operating temperatures in various fields.

ZIF-8 provides accessible channel to small molecules like hydrogen to pass through the pores to interact at the CuO:Al surface. The interaction strength of VOCs with ZIF-8 is defined by the electronic polarizability of tested VOCs.