Design of Selective Hydrogen Gas Sensors using Electrospun CoO Nanofibers

Metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) gas sensors have gained special focus driven by their diverse applications in air-quality detection, inflammable-gas inspection, environmental monitoring, healthcare, defense, security, so on [1]. In this paper, we synthesized cobalt (II) oxide nanofibers. Cobalt Oxide (CoO) nanofibers were fabricated by electrospinning a hybrid solution, which is a mixture of the CoCl2.6H2O sol precursor, poly vinyl pyrrolidone (PVA), polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and solvent. By calcining at three Temperatures 100, 200 and 300 °C the polymeric components were decomposed and a structure of CoO nanofibers was obtained. The structure and morphology of different nanofibres were characterized by various techniques such as FT-IR, XRD, SEM and EDX. The FT-IR spectrum confirms the synthesis of cobalt (II) oxide and The XRD spectroscopy confirms the cubic crystalline structure of CoO [2]. The sensing results indicate that electrospun CoO nanofibers is a promising material for sensing of 25 ppm H2 even at room temperature and have good reversibility. Nanofibers CoO had highly selectivity and do not respond to 25 ppm of ethanol, methanol, chloroform, Benzaldehyde, acetone. CoO nanofibers with high surface area and porous configuration are advantageous to achieve high and quick gas response via effective and rapid diffusion of analyte gas onto the sensing surface.