Nanostructured Materials for Room‐Temperature Gas Sensors

TLDR

Nanoscience-driven advances have propelled sensor technology, and current efforts focus on developing high‑performance, low‑cost gas sensors that operate at room temperature to reduce power consumption, eliminate heaters, and simplify fabrication, with nanostructured materials at the core of these platforms. This review surveys key advances in fundamental research, sensing mechanisms, and applications of nanostructured materials for room‑temperature conductometric gas sensors, and outlines future research directions and challenges. The authors analyze how nanostructure influences sensor properties, focusing on structure‑property correlations in room‑temperature conductometric devices.

Abstract

Sensor technology has an important effect on many aspects in our society, and has gained much progress, propelled by the development of nanoscience and nanotechnology. Current research efforts are directed toward developing high-performance gas sensors with low operating temperature at low fabrication costs. A gas sensor working at room temperature is very appealing as it provides very low power consumption and does not require a heater for high-temperature operation, and hence simplifies the fabrication of sensor devices and reduces the operating cost. Nanostructured materials are at the core of the development of any room-temperature sensing platform. The most important advances with regard to fundamental research, sensing mechanisms, and application of nanostructured materials for room-temperature conductometric sensor devices are reviewed here. Particular emphasis is given to the relation between the nanostructure and sensor properties in an attempt to address structure-property correlations. Finally, some future research perspectives and new challenges that the field of room-temperature sensors will have to address are also discussed.