CuO nanosheets as potential scaffolds for gas sensing applications

Herein, we report a simple and facile synthesis and characterization of CuO nanosheets for the fabrication of efficient gas sensing applications. The CuO nanosheets were synthesized by a facile hydrothermal process and characterized in detail in terms of their morphological, structural, optical and compositional properties using various techniques such as field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-vis and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. The detailed characterizations revealed that the synthesized CuO nanosheets are grown in high density, possessing well-crystallinity and monoclinic crystal structure. The synthesized CuO nanosheets were used as potential functional material to fabricate high sensitive sensors to detect various harmful gases, i.e. acetone, ethanol, and methanol. The fabricated gas sensors exhibited high gas responses of 7.725, 12.541 and 9.325 for acetone, ethanol, and methanol, respectively at an optimized temperature of 370 °C for 200 ppm concentrations. Finally, a sensing mechanism for the gas sensing behavior of CuO nanosheets was also proposed.