Ag-Doped ZnO Nanoparticles for Enhanced Ethanol Gas Sensing Application

Herein, we report the synthesis, characterization and ethanol gas sensing application of Ag-doped ZnO nanoparticles. The nanoparticles were synthesized through a facile hydrothermal process and characterized through various characterization techniques. The detailed characterizations confirmed that the synthesized Ag-doped ZnO nanoparticles are grown in high density with an average diameter of ~20 ± 5 nm, possessing well-crystalline wurtzite hexagonal crystal structure and exhibiting good optical properties. The as-synthesized Ag-doped ZnO nanoparticles were further used as functional material to fabricate efficient ethanol gas sensor which exhibited excellent gas response. The detailed gas sensing experiments revealed that at an optimized temperature, i.e., 320 °C, the recorded gas response was 32.815 for 200 ppm concentration of ethanol gas. Finally, a plausible gas sensing mechanism was also presented in this paper.