Zappa Dario
SENSOR Laboratory, Department of Information Engineering (DII), University of Brescia, Via Valotti 9, 25133 Brescia, Italy.
Sensors (Basel). 2019 May 20;19(10):2332. doi: 10.3390/s19102332.
Hydrogen sensing is becoming one of the hottest topics in the chemical sensing field, due to its wide number of applications and the dangerousness of hydrogen leakages. For this reason, research activities are focusing on the development of high-performance materials that can be easily integrated in sensing devices. In this work, we investigated the influence of Nb on the sensing performances of WO nanowires (NWs) synthetized by a low-cost thermal oxidation method. The morphology and the structure of these Nb-WO nanowires were investigated by field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM), high-resolution transmission electron microscope (HR-TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman and X-ray photoelectron (XPS) spectroscopies, confirming that the addition of Nb does not modify significantly the monoclinic crystal structure of WO. Moreover, we integrated these NWs into chemical sensors, and we assessed their performances toward hydrogen and some common interfering compounds. Although the hydrogen sensing performances of WO nanowires were already excellent, thanks to the presence of Nb they have been further enhanced, reaching the outstanding value of more than 80,000 towards 500 ppm @ 200 °C. This opens the possibility of their integration in commercial equipment, like electronic noses and portable devices.
由于氢气的广泛应用以及氢气泄漏的危险性，氢气传感正成为化学传感领域最热门的话题之一。因此，研究活动集中在开发能够轻松集成到传感设备中的高性能材料上。在这项工作中，我们研究了铌对通过低成本热氧化法合成的氧化钨纳米线（NWs）传感性能的影响。通过场发射扫描电子显微镜（FE-SEM）、高分辨率透射电子显微镜（HR-TEM）、X射线衍射（XRD）、拉曼光谱和X射线光电子能谱（XPS）对这些铌掺杂氧化钨纳米线的形态和结构进行了研究，证实铌的添加并未显著改变氧化钨的单斜晶体结构。此外，我们将这些纳米线集成到化学传感器中，并评估了它们对氢气和一些常见干扰化合物的性能。尽管氧化钨纳米线的氢气传感性能已经非常出色，但由于铌的存在，其性能得到了进一步提升，在200℃下对500 ppm氢气的响应达到了超过80,000的优异值。这为将它们集成到电子鼻和便携式设备等商业设备中开辟了可能性。
