Structural effect of ZnO-Ag chemoresistive sensor on flexible substrate for ethylene gas detection

As a versatile semiconductor material, ZnO has been investigated in many areas. One of the ZnO potential application is its use as the sensing materials, especially for gas sensors. In this study, ethylene gas sensor is successfully fabricated using ZnO-Ag layer on a flexible PET-ITO substrate using a simple electrochemical deposition process. The morphological and structural properties of the layer are characterized and related to the sensors' performance. From the result, it is shown that the ethylene sensing works best on a smaller crystallite size ZnO-Ag layer, with the most evenly coverage layer. The optimum sensor was made using ZnO and 0.6 mM of Ag. This sensor showed a relative change in resistance or a response value of 5.65 % and 16.01 % under ethylene gas exposure at 30 and 100 ppm, respectively. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

ZnO as a versatile semiconductor material shows great potential in gas sensors, especially when used with Ag as a sensing layer. Smaller crystallite size and uniform coverage of the ZnO-Ag layer have shown to improve the performance of ethylene gas sensors.