Room Temperature CO Sensing with Metal Oxide Nanoparticles Using work Function Readout

In this work a comparative study of work function readout based CO gas sensing using metal oxide nanoparticles at room temperature is presented. The gas sensing measurements were recorded with the help of Kelvin probe that can measure the change in work function of the sensitive layers when exposed to CO. We detected the enhancement in the CO gas sensing properties of n-type nanocrystalline CeO2 by the introduction of p-type CuO nanoparticles at room temperature. Moreover the inclusion of temperature (T = 100̊C), induced a relatively negative impact in the gas sensing properties of the investigated nanoparticles. The combination of n- and p- type mixed metal oxides has a huge potential to obtain relatively stable gas sensitive layers that can be successfully implied towards low power consuming CO gas sensors.