Highly selective n-butanol gas sensor based on mesoporous SnO2 prepared with hydrothermal treatment

Mesoporous worm-like SnO2 architectures have been synthesized via a simple hydrothermal process combining with an annealing process in the presence of various amount of soluble starch. Average crystallite size depends on amount of starch added during synthesis of tin dioxide and is changing from 9.1, 8.2, 7.5 to 6.1 nm. The obtained tin dioxide is porous and found that pore diameter is from 6 to 15 nm. Furthermore, we investigated their gas sensing performances toward several volatile organic compounds. The worm-like SnO2 nanostructures exhibit highly sensitive and selective to n-butanol. The linear dependences of the sensitivity were also observed as the n-butanol concentrations varied from 5 to 100 ppm in logarithmic forms, indicating that the worm-like SnO2 is highly promising for the applications of n-butanol gas sensors.