Metal Oxide Nanowire Sensor System for Hazardous Gas Detection

Nanowires, featuring various metal oxide sensing materials such as copper oxide and doped tin oxides, have been successfully synthesized. Sensor devices were designed and fabricated to integrate nanowires as a functional component, where dielectrophoretic assembly was applied to orient and align the nanowires. Hazardous gases, mainly organic vapors, were tested with these nanowire sensor devices at different concentration levels. Copper oxide nanowire sensor was also chosen to detect hydrogen sulfide due to their unique reaction. Four types of doped tin oxide nanowire sensors were consolidated into an array in order to resolve the issue of poor selectivity. Both dynamic and static methods were utilized to obtain the response kinetics and sensitivity data for analysis. Sensing performance was characterized and principle component analysis (PCA) was conducted to further reveal the sensor capability of classifying the gas analytes.