Because of the interesting and multifunctional properties, recently, ZnO nanostructures are considered as excellent material for fabrication of highly sensitive and selective gas sensors. Thus, ZnO nanomaterials are widely used to fabricate efficient gas sensors for the detection of various hazardous and toxic gases. The presented review article is focusing on the recent developments of NO₂ gas sensors based on ZnO nanomaterials. The review presents the general introduction of some metal oxide nanomaterials for gas sensing application and finally focusing on the structure of ZnO and its gas sensing mechanisms. Basic gas sensing characteristics such as gas response, response time, recovery time, selectivity, detection limit, stability and recyclability, etc are also discussed in this article. Further, the utilization of various ZnO nanomaterials such as nanorods, nanowires, nano-micro flowers, quantum dots, thin films and nanosheets, etc for the fabrication of NO₂ gas sensors are also presented. Moreover, various factors such as NO₂ concentrations, annealing temperature, ZnO morphologies and particle sizes, relative humidity, operating temperatures which are affecting the NO₂ gas sensing properties are discussed in this review. Finally, the review article is concluded and future directions are presented.

Renewable, cost-effective and eco-friendly electrode materials have attracted much attention in the energy conversion and storage fields. Bagasse, the waste product from sugarcane that mainly contains cellulose derivatives, can be a promising candidate to manufacture supercapacitor electrode materials. This study demonstrates the fabrication and characterization of highly porous carbon aerogels by using bagasse as a raw material. Macro and mesoporous carbon was first prepared by carbonizing the freeze-dried bagasse aerogel; consequently, microporous structure was created on the walls of the mesoporous carbon by chemical activation. Interestingly, it was observed that the specific surface area, the pore size and distribution of the hierarchical porous carbon were affected by the activation temperature. In order to evaluate the ability of the hierarchical porous carbon towards the supercapacitor electrode performance, solid state symmetric supercapacitors were assembled, and a comparable high specific capacitance of 142.1 F g⁻¹ at a discharge current density of 0.5 A g⁻¹ was demonstrated. The fabricated solid state supercapacitor displayed excellent capacitance retention of 93.9% over 5000 cycles. The high energy storage ability of the hierarchical porous carbon was attributed to the specially designed pore structures, i.e., co-existence of the micropores and mesopores. This research has demonstrated that utilization of sustainable biopolymers as the raw materials for high performance supercapacitor electrode materials is an effective way to fabricate low-cost energy storage devices.

A sensor can be called ideal or perfect if it is enriched with certain characteristics viz., superior detections range, high sensitivity, selectivity, resolution, reproducibility, repeatability, and response time with good flow. Recently, biosensors made of nanoparticles (NPs) have gained very high popularity due to their excellent applications in nearly all the fields of science and technology. The use of NPs in the biosensor is usually done to fill the gap between the converter and the bioreceptor, which is at the nanoscale. Simultaneously the uses of NPs and electrochemical techniques have led to the emergence of biosensors with high sensitivity and decomposition power. This review summarizes the development of biosensors made of NPssuch as noble metal NPs and metal oxide NPs, nanowires (NWs), nanorods (NRs), carbon nanotubes (CNTs), quantum dots (QDs), and dendrimers and their recent advancement in biosensing technology with the expansion of nanotechnology.