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

Abstract

Yttrium (Y) doped SnO2 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 SnO2 nanofibers for various Y concentrations, among which $5 wt$.% Y doped SnO2 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 SnO2 nanofibers were characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), respectively.