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Nanocooxides; humidity sensors; morphology; porous media; XRD; SEM.

This paper reports the synthesis of SnO₂–CuO, SnO₂–Fe₂O₃ and SnO₂–SbO₂ composites of nano oxides and comparative study of humidity sensing on their electrical resistances. CuO, Fe₂O₃ and SbO₂ were added within base material SnO₂ in the ratio 1 : 0.25, 1 : 0.50 and 1 : 1. Characterizations of materials were done using SEM and XRD. SEM images show the surface morphology and X-ray diffraction reveals the nanostructure of sensing materials. The pellets were annealed at 200, 400 and 600°C respectively for 3 h and after each step of annealing, observations were carried out. It was observed that as relative humidity (%RH) increases, there was decrease in the resistance of pellet for the entire range of RH. Results were found reproducible. SnO₂–SbO₂ shows maximum sensitivity for humidity (12 M𝛺/%RH) among other composites.

B C Yadav¹ Preeti Sharma¹ P K Khanna²

1. Nanomaterials and Sensors Research Laboratory, Department of Physics, Lucknow University, Lucknow 226 007, India
2. Nanoscience Laboratory, Centre for Materials for Electronics Technology (C-MET), Off Dr. Homi Bhabha Road, Panchawati, Pune 411 008, India

Published

July 2011

Manuscript received

5 February 2010

Manuscript revised

22 May 2010