Electrophoretically fabricated tubular Taguchi type ZnFe2O4-based thick film gas sensor

•EPD deposition technique is a potential alternative for fabricating uniform sensor films.•The Taguchi type gas sensors fabricated first time by using EPD technique.•ZFO shows low concentration VOC sensing (12.5 ppm) and low response time (20–30 s).•EPD coated ZFO film shows stable sensing characteristics.•ZFO shows excellent low concentration sensitivity towards all the studied gases. A facile method has been developed to fabricate tubular chemi-resistive type thick film gas sensors. The method includes the preparation of a stable suspension of the sensing material followed by fabrication of a uniform sensing layer by electrophoretic deposition (EPD) technique on the tubular Taguchi type alumina sensing element. Prior to fabrication of the sensing film, the non-conducting alumina tube is in-situ coated with a conducting polymer (polypyrrole). EPD grown Taguchi sensors demonstrate excellent sensing capability, with responses of 87 % and 46 % to 400 and 12.5 ppm acetone, respectively. Moreover, these sensors exhibit an impressive fast response time of approximately 20–30 s. The developed process can be extended to various other sensing materials to develop Taguchi type sensors in a repetitive manner.