Electrical Properties and Sensitivity of SnO2 Nanostructures to Organic Compounds.

Metal-oxide semiconductors are the most widely used gas-sensitive materials due to their numerous advantages such as high sensitivity to various gases with ease of production, high compatibility with other processes, low cost, simplicity of measurements along with minimal energy consumption. From this point of view, investigations of the morphological and electrical characteristics of metal-oxide materials, particularly based on tin(IV) oxide, and the determination of their sensitivity to organic compounds such as ethyl acetate and chlorobenzene are extremely important. In this work, tin(IV)-oxide nanostructures have been synthesized by chemical vapour deposition (CVD) technique and modified with argentum. Obtained samples have been investigated with electron microscopy, and as a result, it was found that, during the synthesis under different conditions, nanoparticles of zero- and mixed zero- and one-dimensional morphology were obtained. The study of electrical characteristics and sensitivity towards vapours of ethyl acetate and chlorobenzene has been carried out. The comparison of electrical properties and sensitivity to the vapours of organic substances of pure and modified 0D- and mix 0D + 1D-SnO₂-samples is presented. It was found that morphology affects not only electrical properties of tin(IV)-oxide nanostructures, but also their sensing properties. It was shown that the addition of argentum has an ambiguous effect on the sensitivity depending on the morphology of the obtained samples; modification leads to increasing of 0D-sample sensitivity and decreasing of sensing response for 0D + 1D-SnO₂-sample. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]