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Recently, the performance of solar cell is impacted by rising panel temperatures. For solar cells to work at their best and have the longest possible useful life, the temperature of the panels must be kept at an ideal level. Current temperature sensors have a slow response time, poor accuracy, and low resolution. Meanwhile, Al2O3 and its derivatives have demonstrated a noteworthy role in temperature sensing applications due to its greater surface area, ease of synthesis, tailored optical characteristics, high melting point, and high thermal expansion coefficient. Al2O3-based nanoparticles have been employed in fiber optic-based temperature sensors as a sensing layer, a sensitivity improvement material, and a sensing matrix material. In this chapter, we discuss the function of Al2O3-based nanomaterials in evanescent wave-based temperature sensors, sensing characteristics such as sensitivity, linearity, and repeatability. The ZAZ-based sensor (Section 3.1) shows an operating temperature range between 100.9°C and 1111.0°C, the temperature sensitivity becomes 1.8 × 10−5/°C. The fabricated sensor had a linearity of 99.79%. The synthesized Al2O3 nanoparticles (Section 3.2) were given better linearity and high sensitivity (~27) at 697 nm compared with other sensing materials such as ZnO, SnO2, TiO2. The Al2O3-MgO (50–50%) (Section 3.3) demonstrated an ultrahigh sensitivity of 0.62%/°C with a better linear regression coefficient of 95%. The present advances and problems are also discussed in detail.

Crystalline vanadium oxide (V2O5) thin films were grown over zinc oxide (ZnO) buffer layer-coated glass substrates at room temperature by magnetron sputtering technique. Initially, ZnO thin films have been formed by oxidizing sputtered zinc films at different annealing temperatures (300–500°C) in ambient air for 1 h. The influence of ZnO buffer layer on the structural, morphological, optical and electrical properties of the V2O5 films was studied using the X-ray diffraction (XRD), field-emission scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive analysis of X-rays, ultraviolet–visible spectrophotometry and four-point probe method. The thickness values of the deposited films were measured using the stylus probe profilometer. XRD patterns of the V2O5 deposited over ZnO (VZO) showed reflection planes corresponding to V2O5 and ZnO buffer layer. The optical studies showed the enhancement on the optical properties of V2O5 films deposited over ZnO buffer layer. The electrical studies of the VZO films showed that the resistivity of VZO films varied from 400 to 60 Ω cm. The enhancement in the optical and electrical properties may be due to the improvement in the crystallinity of the film because of ZnO buffer layer.