Enhanced gas sensing in pristine carbon nanotubes under continuous ultraviolet light illumination

The advance of nanomaterials has opened new opportunities to develop ever more sensitive sensors owing to their high surface-to-volume ratio. However, it is challenging to achieve intrinsic sensitivities of nanomaterials for ultra-low level detections due to their vulnerability against contamination...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Scientific reports 2012-03, Vol.2 (1), p.343, Article 343
Main Authors: Chen, Gugang, Paronyan, Tereza M., Pigos, Elena M., Harutyunyan, Avetik R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/301/1005/1009
639/638/542
639/925/357/73
639/925/357/995
Carbon
Humanities and Social Sciences
Illumination
multidisciplinary
Nanomaterials
Nanotechnology
Nanotubes
Nitric oxide
Science
Temperature effects
Ultraviolet radiation
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Summary:The advance of nanomaterials has opened new opportunities to develop ever more sensitive sensors owing to their high surface-to-volume ratio. However, it is challenging to achieve intrinsic sensitivities of nanomaterials for ultra-low level detections due to their vulnerability against contaminations. Here we show that despite considerable achievements in the last decade, continuous in situ cleaning of carbon nanotubes with ultraviolet light during gas sensing can still dramatically enhance their performance. For instance in nitric oxide detection, while sensitivity in air is improved two orders of magnitude, under controlled environment it reaches a detection limit of 590 parts-per-quadrillion (ppq) at room temperature. Furthermore, aiming for practical applications we illustrate how to address gas selectivity by introducing a gate bias. The concept of continuous in situ cleaning not only reveals the tremendous sensing potential of pristine carbon nanotubes but also more importantly it can be applied to other nanostructures.
ISSN:2045-2322
2045-2322
DOI:10.1038/srep00343