Synthesis of Nano-Powder Materials Using Spray-Pyrolysis Method

Abstract

In this work the laboratory–scale installation for synthesising powder materials with nano-size grains is presented. Nano-sized zinc and tin oxides were obtained using the spraypyrolysis (SP) method. The zinc oxide was derived from zinc acetate at 300oC, 430oC, 580 oC, 800oC and 950oC. The tin oxide was processed by the thermal decomposition of tin tartrate at 500oC. The SP synthesized zinc oxide was used for manufacturing a methane sensor which was characterized as possessing a much wider range of operating and substantially higher sensitivity, 10 times higher, to methane gas compared to a sensor made out of commercially available zinc oxide.