Scientists have found a way to detect toxic gas nine times better

Portable Gas Detector. Credit: Shutterstock

A research team from Russia and Belarus has made a new gas sensing material out of tungsten oxide that is very sensitive to carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and acetone. The new material was nine times better at detecting gases than the sensors that were already in use. Nano-Structures & Nano-Objects is where the study was written up.

Controlling the quality of the air inside and finding toxic gases and volatile organic compounds are important for making life and work better. They are also needed in many industrial, agricultural, and environmental settings. To do this, scientists need to make special gas-sensing materials that work well with a wide range of gases with different chemical properties.

Scientists from NUST MISIS, Belarusian State University, and the A. V. Luikov Heat and Mass Transfer Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus have made a new nanocomposite material that reacts strongly to different types of toxic gases at a wide range of concentrations. It was made by adding graphene and a copper nanocomposite to tungsten oxide nanopowder.

Chemical solution deposition, which is another name for the sol–gel method, was used to make tungsten oxide. Then, using the solution combustion method, graphene and copper nanopowder were added to the precursor gel to make a structure with many links.

“Then, carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide, and acetone were used as test gases to study the material’s ability to sense gases. Tests have shown that when 1 wt percent of modifier is added, the material becomes nine times more sensitive to carbon dioxide and six times more sensitive to acetone. The samples with 2 wt percent of methanol had the best acetone sensing response “Dmitry Moskovskih, who is in charge of the NUST MISIS Research Center for Engineering Ceramic Nanomaterials, said, “It’s getting worse.”

The researchers think that the simplicity of the proposed synthesis method makes it likely that the nanocomposites they made could be used in highly sensitive commercial gas sensors.

Further information: Yulyan Haiduk et al, WO3–graphene–Cu nanocomposites for CO, NO2 and acetone gas sensors, Nano-Structures & Nano-Objects (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.nanoso.2021.100824

Source: The National University of Science and Technology MISIS