Structural effect of ZnO-Ag chemoresistive sensor on flexible substrate for ethylene gas detection

[Display omitted] •ZnO-Ag layer was deposited on flexible substrate of PET-ITO using electrodeposition technique.•The amount of Ag affect the morphology of the prepared ZnO.•0.6 mM of Ag resulted in low density of nanosheets with many homojunctions.•A flexible sensor of ZnO-Ag shows responses of 5.65 % and 16.01%–30 and 100 ppm of ethylene respectively at room temperature. As a versatile semiconductor material, ZnO has been investigated in many areas. One of the ZnO potential application is its use as the sensing materials, especially for gas sensors. In this study, ethylene gas sensor is successfully fabricated using ZnO-Ag layer on a flexible PET-ITO substrate using a simple electrochemical deposition process. The morphological and structural properties of the layer are characterized and related to the sensors’ performance. From the result, it is shown that the ethylene sensing works best on a smaller crystallite size ZnO-Ag layer, with the most evenly coverage layer. The optimum sensor was made using ZnO and 0.6 mM of Ag. This sensor showed a relative change in resistance or a response value of 5.65 % and 16.01 % under ethylene gas exposure at 30 and 100 ppm, respectively.