Enhanced Field Emission and Low-Pressure Hydrogen Sensing Properties from Al-N-Co-Doped ZnO Nanorods.

ZnO nanostructures show great potential in hydrogen sensing at atmospheric conditions for good gas adsorption abilities. However, there is less research on low-pressure hydrogen sensing performance due to its low concentration and in-homogeneous distributions under low-pressure environments. Here, we report the low-pressure hydrogen sensing by the construction of Al-N-co-doped ZnO nanorods based on the adsorption-induced field emission enhancement effect in the pressure range of 10 to 10 Pa. The investigation indicates that the Al-N-co-doped ZnO sample is the most sensitive to low-pressure hydrogen sensing among all ZnO samples, with the highest sensing current increase of 140% for 5 min emission. In addition, the increased amplitude of sensing current for the Al-N-co-doped ZnO sample could reach 75% at the pressure 7 × 10 Pa for 1 min emission. This work not only expands the hydrogen sensing applications to the co-doped ZnO nanomaterials, but also provides a promising approach to develop field emission cathodes with strong low-pressure hydrogen sensing effect.