Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 16, 2026
Engineering Molecular Recognition with Bio-mimetic Polymers on Single Walled Carbon Nanotubes
Published on: January 10, 2017
Highly sensitive room temperature carbon monoxide detection using SnO2 nanoparticle-decorated semiconducting
Yang Zhang1, Shumao Cui, Jingbo Chang
1Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, 3200 North Cramer Street, Milwaukee, WI 53211, USA.
Abstract:
We demonstrate a practical sensing platform, consisting of SnO(2) nanoparticle-decorated semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes assembled on gold electrodes via a dielectrophoretic process, for highly sensitive CO detection with fast response at room temperature. The highest sensitivity obtained was 0.27 and the response time was ∼2 s for 100 ppm CO detection. The lower detection limit was ∼1 ppm. These results indicate that the sensing performance of our device is among the best of CO sensors implemented with SWNTs. Further, we observed a significant increase in sensitivity to 0.67 after subjecting the device to an electrical breakdown at 8 V. We also proposed a theoretical model to reveal the relationship between the sensitivity and the gas concentration. The new model not only resulted in a nice fit to our data, but also allowed us to estimate the contact resistance between an individual SWNT and the gold electrodes.
