Highly selective room temperature operated ammonia sensor synthesized using electrospun yttrium doped SnO₂ nanofibers

Abstract

Yttrium (Y) doped SnO 2 nanofibers were successfully synthesized and used for detecting low ammonia concentrations at room temperature (RT). Electrospinning followed by calcination method was used to synthesize the Y doped SnO 2 nanofibers for various Y concentrations, among which $5 wt$ .% Y doped SnO 2 nanofibers (average diameter ~90 nm) demonstrated the best response. To analyze the selectivity of the sensor, the sensing properties were also studied for other analytes like acetone, methanol and ethanol, along with ammonia. The% response was observed to be 237%under 10 ppm of ammonia, which is found to be 2.7, 5.3 and 6.6 times higher as compared to acetone (87.5%), ethanol (44.4%) and methanol (36%) responses at 10 ppm, respectively, defining the excellent selectivity of the sensor towards ammonia detection. The fabricated sensor manifests fast response and recovery times i.e. less than a minute. The structural and morphological characteristics of Y doped SnO 2 nanofibers were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), respectively.