A study of ordered La-doped SnO2 nanofibers in light of their length and gas sensitivity

In this paper, the behavior of tin dioxide fibers used as sensing material are firstly improved when the fibers are doped with lanthanum and arranged in an orderly manner during their collection. The fibers used in the study are prepared by electrospinning and collected with a double-ring collector. In order to carry out the arrangement, the factors affecting on the growth of fibers are discussed in detail, and the expression of fiber length is derived. The ordering of the fibers brings significant improvement in gas sensitivity. According to the experimental data, the ordering brings about an average 20%–40% increase of sensitivity. Especially, at the ethanol concentration of 100 ppm, the sensitivity increases from 163.2 to 241, raising 48%.