The Project
Description
Recently, researchers have devoted significant effort to the synthesis of nanostructured metal oxide (MOX) for detecting harmful pollutants or toxic/harmful gases such as COx, NH3 and H2S. The demand for low-power, inexpensive, and highly selective sensors for the detection of harmful gases has grown in various areas, e.g. environmental monitoring and the food industry. MOX's nanowires (NWs) represent an excellent solution for detection due to their outstanding physical/chemical properties. However, their limited selectivity and high operating temperature are still major challenges to be solved. One possibility to overcome these issues is the functionalization and combination of these nanostructures. The formation of 3D heterostructures and their functionalization by means of metal organic framework (MOF) have greater potential.
In heterostructures, the interface between two materials changes the transport of charge carriers and increases the reactive surface area. In contrast, MOFs consisting of metals and organic linkers exhibit outstanding properties such as high surface area, ultra-high porosity. In addition to the modification of the sensing material, the power consumption of the sensor can be greatly reduced by engineering the structure of the device, especially the heater. Recently, research has focused on the production of suspended microheaters of small size to limit unnecessary heat loss through the substrate.
Therefore, this project aims to develop low-power, mechanically stable, inexpensive and highly selective devices through the development of new nanostructured materials and a sensing platform for the detection of toxic/harmful gases.
Targets
Efficient Detection of pollutants or harmful gases (NH3, H2S, COx) becomes extremely important both for domestic and industrial point of view because of their harmful effects on human/animal health and environment. Therefore, the fabrication of robust chemical sensors with high accuracy, low cost and low-power consumption become the need of present time.
The main goal of this collaborative project is to develop novel nanostructured materials and low-power consumption sensing platform for efficient and selective detection of harmful gases. In details, the main objectives of the project are:
Synthesis and characterization of pristine NiO and WO3 NWs using vapor-liquid-solid VLS mechanism on alumina substrate.
Development of novel low-power consuming, mechanically durable, and electrically isolated platform with metallic NWs heater for the durable and facile integration of bottom-up grown nanowires.
Direct growth of nanowires on sensing platform and evaluation of their sensing performance under the influence of NH3, H2S and COx gases at different operating temperatures.
Synthesis and characterization of 3-D heterostructure 3D-HS of NiO and WO3 NWs (p-n heterostructure) on alumina substrate and sensing platform.
Detection of NH3, H2S and COx at different operating temperatures using 3-D heterostructure based sensor,
Synthesis and characterization of different metal organic framework (MOF-5 and MOF-74) at room temperature.
Functionalization of NiO and WO3 NWs deposited on sensing platform with MOF’s and evaluation of their sensing performance.
Promote exchange and mobility of researchers, in particular PhD students and young post-doc researchers, to disseminate knowledge and expertise between the two Institutions.
Exploitation of project outcomes, such as implementation of sensor in commercial devices, and dissemination of results on international peer-reviewed journals and conferences.