Preparation and bifunctional gas sensing properties of porous In2O3-CeO2 binary oxide nanotubes

The porous binary In(2)O(3)-CeO(2) oxides nanotubes (NTs) in cubic phase were first fabricated by electrospinning (ESP) method and characterized by SEM, TEM, XRD, XPS and UV-vis absorption techniques. By adjusting the In(2)O(3) and CeO(2) molar ratio, the out diameters and wall thicknesses of the final composites were tuned ranging of 90-180 nm and 15-9 nm, respectively. The band gap of the binary oxides gradually decreases, and the ratio of Ce(3+) to Ce(4+) increases with the increase of CeO(2), implying that surface oxygen vacancies gradually increase. The gas sensing test reveals that when the content of CeO(2) is appropriate, the as fabricated In(2)O(3)-CeO(2) NTs could be bifunctional gas sensors to detect H(2)S at low temperature(25-110 °C) while acetone at relative high temperature (300 °C). The In(75)Ce(25) NTs sensor is an optimum one, which exhibits the highest response of 498 to H(2)S at 80 °C and the highest response of 30 to acetone at 300 °C. In contrast to the pure In(2)O(3) sensor, the response and recovery times, as well as the sensing reaction barrier height, for In(75)Ce(25) both degrade considerably. The above temperature-dependent sensing properties were attributed to two different gas sensing mechanisms, sulfuration at low temperature and adsorption at high temperature.