Presentation Title: Metal oxides nanostructures for chemical sensing
Prof. Dr. Elisabetta Comini presented this talk in the webinar on Nanomedicine, Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology organized by Vebleo
Author: Vardan Galstyan, Giorgio Duina, Navpreet Kaur, Abderrahim Moumen, Mandeep Singh, Dario Zappa, Elisabetta Comini
Affiliation: Sensors, Department of Information Engineering, University of Brescia, Brescia, 25133, Italy
Biography
Prof. Dr. Elisabetta Comini earned her Laurea degree in Physics from University of Pisa working on crystals and spectroscopy in 1996; Prof. Dr. Elisabetta Comini then pursued her Ph.D. in Material science at the University of Brescia in 2000 on metal oxide thin films for chemical sensing. She received her Ph.D. degree in material science at the University of Brescia. She has been appointed assistant professor of physics of matter at Brescia University in 2001. Prof. Dr. Elisabetta Comini is now Full Professor in Physics at the University of Brescia.
Prof. Dr. Elisabetta Comini is a researcher specialist in the growth of metal oxides, particularly nanowires, thin films and the measurement of their electronic, functional and structural properties. Prof. Dr. Elisabetta Comini was responsible of the research line on “Metal oxide nanocrystalline quasi-1D structures” at the SENSOR laboratory (Brescia University) since 2002 and now she is director of the Sensor lab (sensor.unibs.it).
Prof. Dr. Elisabetta Comini serves as a reviewer for various international journals and she is part of the technical program committee of conferences in chemical sensing. Moreover, she was selected as Eurosensors Fellow in 2012.
Prof. Dr. Elisabetta Comini was the organizer of symposia within the MRS society, within E-MRS society meetings. She is a Member of the Technical Program Committee of several conferences such as 6th IEEE SENSORS 2007, 7th IEEE SENSORS 2008, Eurosensors 2009 to 2020. She was one of the five co-chairs of the 2013 Fall Meeting of the Materials Research Society. She is a voting member of the steering committee of EUROSENSORS conference.
Prof. Dr. Elisabetta Comini was a promoter of 15 Ph.D., and supervisor of 30 undergraduate students. She has more than 500 communications, 130 invited communications at conferences and she has given more than 65 invited communications including 6 plenary talk. EC has more than 350 peer-reviewed paper, h-index 55 (Web of Science), 57 (Scopus), 64 (goggle scholar).
Abstract
Nowadays, air quality detection is extremely important. Therefore, there is a need for advanced sensing technologies to provide indoor and outdoor environmental monitoring. Besides, high-performance sensing devices are in need to detect the possible leakage of chemical compounds and hazardous gases from the industrial sectors and ensure the quality of food. Semiconductors are very attractive and promising materials for the fabrication of advanced and cost-effective gas sensing devices.
Especially, metal oxide nanostructures with their excellent chemical stability, high charge carrier mobility, large specific surface area, and easy fabrication have been considered as the most used materials in chemical gas sensors. The electrical conductance of oxide materials is changed due to the adsorption and desorption of gaseous compounds on their surface. However, the properties of oxide materials should be improved to achieve high sensitivity and selectivity, fast response and recovery times.
The surface morphology, crystal structure, composition and size of metal oxides play an important role to tune their sensing performance. Intensive studies have been carried out for the synthesis of pure and doped oxide materials with various morphologies tailoring their sensing performance. The functionalization of metal oxide nanomaterials and the fabrication of heterojunctions are other effective strategies to enhance their response and tune the selectivity to a specific gas.
In this case, the formation of a p-n, p-p, or n-n interfaces is a significant factor to improve the reaction between the sensing structure and gaseous compounds. Herein, we report on the novel preparation and characterization of different nanostructures and heterostructures morphologies such as SnO2, CuO, NiO, WO3, Bi2O3 and ZnO NWs, TiO2 nanotubes and NiO/ZnO branched 1D-1D nano-heterostructures and NiO/SnO2, NiO/WO3, CuO/ZnO Core-shell, TiO2/GO and ZnO/GO composites.
The prepared materials have been analyzed using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), x-ray diffraction (XRD), UV-Vis and Raman spectroscopy. Finally, chemical gas sensors have been fabricated based on the prepared materials and tested towards a wide range of reducing and oxidizing gases.
Graphical Abstract
This talk was delivered in the webinar organized by Vebleo