AACVD synthesized tungsten oxide-NWs loaded with osmium oxide as a gas sensor array: enhancing detection with PCA and ANNs.

This paper presents the fabrication of sensors based on tungsten trioxide nanowires decorated with osmium oxide nanoparticles using the aerosol-assisted chemical vapor deposition (AACVD) technique. This methodology allows the obtention of different osmium oxide decoration loadings on the tungsten oxide nanowires. The morphological and chemical characteristics; and the structural properties of the sensing layers of the sensors were studied using different techniques such as FESEM, HR-TEM, and ToF-SIMS. The gas sensing properties were analyzed for pure tungsten trioxide sensors and tungsten trioxide loaded with osmium exposed to nitrogen dioxide, hydrogen, and ethanol, thus assessing the impact of the loading on the sensor response. A sensor array comprising pure and osmium-loaded tungsten oxide devices coupled to multivariate pattern recognition techniques is shown to perform well in gas identification and quantification tasks, offering promising implications in the field of gas sensing technology.