Scientists make toxic gas detection nine times more efficient

A Russian-Belarusian research team has developed a new gas detection material based on tungsten oxide that has high sensitivity to carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and acetone. The gas detection response of the new material was nine times greater than that of existing sensors. The study was published in Nano-Structures & Nano-Objects.

Indoor air quality monitoring and detection of toxic gases and volatile organic compounds are important for improving living and working conditions, and are needed in a variety of industrial, agricultural and environmental applications. This requires the development of special gas sensing materials with high sensing response to a variety of gases of different chemical nature.

Scientists from NUST MISIS, Belarusian State University and AV Luikov Institute of Heat and Mass Transfer of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus have synthesized a new nanocomposite material that exhibits high sensitivity to different types of toxic gases in a wide variety of concentrations. It was obtained from a tungsten oxide nanopowder modified with graphene and a copper nanocomposite.

Tungsten oxide was obtained via a sol-gel method also known as chemical solution deposition. Then, graphene-copper nanopowder, obtained by the solution combustion method, was added to the precursor gel to obtain a tightly interconnected structure.

“The gas sensing properties of the material were then investigated with carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and acetone used as test gases. Tests have shown that the introduction of 1% modifier leads to a nine-fold increase in the sensitivity of the material to carbon monoxide. and a six-fold increase in sensitivity to acetone. The highest detection response to acetone was obtained for samples with 2% modifier,” said Dmitry Moskovskih, Director of the NUST MISIS Research Center for Ceramic Nanomaterials Engineering.

The resulting nanocomposites have great potential for practical application in highly sensitive commercial gas sensors due to the simplicity of the proposed synthesis approach, the researchers believe.