V2O5 nanofibers: Potential contestant for high performance xylene sensor

Nanofibers are often referred in medical, engineering and defense applications due to their unusual surface structure, which hold special significance in determining the functional properties. In this work, we report the simple spray pyrolysis strategy to deposit vanadium pentoxide (V2O5) nanofibers on to glass substrate. A switch in the crystal structure from amorphous to polycrystalline was noticed when the precursor concentration was varied from 0.025 to 0.1 M. The size of polycrystallites was increased with precursor concentration. From scanning electron micrographs (SEM), well-defined interconnected nanofiber morphology was observed for V2O5 film deposited at 0.1 M of precursor concentration. The sensing properties of V2O5 film towards formaldehyde, ethanol, toluene, methanol, xylene, acetone, acetaldehyde and ammonia vapours were observed. V2O5 nanofibers showed excellent selectivity and response towards xylene in the concentration range of 5 and 1000 ppm at room temperature.