Noble Metals/NiO Core- Shell Based Gas Sensors

Abstract

The application of novel core-shell nanostructure composed of Cu, Ag, Au/NiO to improve the sensitivity of pure NiO to H2S gas sensors is demonstrated in this study. The growth of Cu, Ag, Au/NiO core-shell nanostructure is performed by chemical reaction of NiO on metal nanoparticle (Cu, Ag and Au) that prepared by pulsed laser ablation (PLA( technique. This is to form the homogeneous structure of the sensors investigated in this report to assess their sensitivity in terms of H2S detection. These novel H2S gas sensors were evaluated at operating temperatures of 25 °C, 100 °C and at 150 °C. The result reveals the Cu, Ag, Au/NiO core-shell nanostructure present a good sensitivity at low working temperatures compared by pure NiO nanoparticles. These core-shell nanostructure sensors also possess the highest response (<32 s) and recovery (<28 s) values with greater repeatability seen for H2S sensors at low temperatures, unlike traditional sensors that only work effectively at much higher temperatures. The data in this study indicates the newly-developed Cu, Ag, Au/NiO core-shell nanostructure based sensors are highly promising for industrial applications.