Controlling the Response of Gas-Sensitive Zinc Oxide Nanostructures to Water Vapor

Gas-sensitive devices have great potential for use in a variety of applications, including environmental monitoring, medicine, and various industries. The stability of gas sensors based on zinc oxide can be significantly affected by the presence of water vapors in the atmosphere. Gas-sensitive layers based on ZnO nanowires were synthesized by the hydrothermal method. The effect of different seed layers was studied in order to optimize the sensor properties of zinc oxide nanostructures. It was shown that layers consisting of zinc oxide nanowires synthesized using sacrificial doping on the seed layers of ZnO nanoparticles exhibited a moderate response to the vapor of volatile organic compounds, with almost no response to water vapor.