A facile thermal evaporation route for large-area synthesis of tin oxide nanowires: Characterizations and their use for liquid petroleum gas sensor

In this paper, a very simple procedure was presented for the reproducible synthesis of large-area SnO2 nanowires (NWs) on a silicon substrate by evaporating Sn powders at temperatures of 700, 750, and 800 °C. As-obtained SnO2 NWs were characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Raman spectroscopy. They revealed that the morphology of the NWs is affected by growth temperature and the SnO2 NWs are single-crystalline tetragonal. The band gap of the NWs is in the range of 4.2–4.3 eV as determined from UV/visible absorption. The NWs show stable photoluminescence with an emission peak centered at around 620 nm at room-temperature. The sensors fabricated from the SnO2 NWs synthesized at 700 °C exhibited good response to LPG (liquefied petroleum gas) at an operating temperature of 400 °C.