Synthesis, characterization, and gas sensing properties against NO2 oxidation gas of (SnO2)1-x(Ag2O)x nanocomposite thin film

This paper describes the creation of (SnO2)1-x(Ag2O)x nanocomposites films (x=0,0.2, and 0.4 wt) that are n-type gas-sensitive semiconductors that were made using the pulse laser deposition (PLD) process at room temperature (RT) on glass substrates. XRD, EDX, FESEM, and AFM are a used to explore the structural, compositional, and morphological characteristics of these films. In order to demonstrate optical properties and analyze the band gap energy of samples, a UV-vis spectrophotometer is used. The band gap of (SnO2)1-x(Ag2O)x nanocomposites noticed decrease ranging from 3.76 to 3.49 eV with increasing amount of Ag2O. These films’ sensitivity and selectivity to the oxidizing gas NO2 are an evaluated at various temperatures. At a low operating temperature of 200 °C, a (SnO2)0.8(Ag2O)0.2 nanocomposites film exhibits extremely high responses values at 73.3% to NO2 compared to pure SnO2 (four orders of magnitude in the value of (Rg − Ra)/Ra; Rg and Ra are the resistance in NO2 and in air, respectively). It also exhibits excellent selectivity for NO2 gas. The impact of Ag2O on these films’ sensing properties toward NO2 is an examined.