Fabrication and Characterization of Nano Structured ZnO Thin Films For Gas Sensing Applications

Over the last few decades, the rapid growth of industrialization has led to a significant increase in atmospheric pollution and a decline in air quality, resulting in various respiratory illnesses. Currently, thin film gas sensors are becoming increasingly important in the detection of harmful gases. The sensitivity of the sensor relies on the materials, morphology, and techniques used to create the thin film, with a thickness ranging in nm. These metal semiconductor sensors are manufactured by depositing a thin film on different materials using the physical vapour deposition technique or Hydrothermal Method. In this proposed work, we fabricated 1D,2D,3D nanostructured zinc oxide thin films on a glass substrate as a sensitive layer by varying temperature and chemical composition, with silver (Ag) as a metal contact. The fabricated layers were characterized by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) which reviled nano flower, nanorod & nanowires like structure, layer composition of Zn and O elements wear got from Energy Dispersive X-ray Analysis (EDAX) and crystalline nature of the grown ZnO is characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) it revealed a Hexagonal Crystal structured ZnO nanoparticle with Alpha (°): 90, Beta (°): 90, Gamma (°): 120 and IV Characteristics were obtained from fabricated device are in resistive nature. Furthermore, the device is characterized for gas sensing application to sense the acetone vapour.