H2 sensing properties of two-dimensional zinc oxide nanostructures

In this work we have grown particular zinc oxide two-dimensional nanostructures which are essentially a series of hexagonal very thin sheets. The hexagonal wurtzite crystal structure gives them their peculiar shape, whose dimensions are few microns wide, with a thickness in the order of 25 nm. Such kind of nanostructure, grown by thermal oxidation of evaporated metallic zinc on a silica substrate, has been used to fabricate conductometric gas sensors, investigated then for hydrogen gas detection. The “depletion layer sensing mechanism” is clarified, explaining how the geometrical factors of one- and two-dimensional nanostructures affect their sensing parameters. The comparison with one-dimensional ZnO nanowires based structures shows that two-dimensional nanostructures are ideal for gas sensing, due to their tiny thickness, which is comparable to the depletion-layer thickness, and their large cross-section, which increases the base current, thus lowering the limit of detection. The response to H2 has been found good even to sub-ppm concentrations, with response and recovery times shorter than 18 s in the whole range of H2 concentrations investigated (500 ppb–10 ppm). The limit of detection has been found around 200 ppb for H2 gas even at relatively low working temperature (175 °C).