Chapters authored
Applications of Carbon Nanotubes and Their Polymer Nanocomposites for Gas Sensors
Because of extensive applications in industrial and environmental monitoring, biomedicines and pharmaceutics, etc., gas sensors are being focused widely by the research community since a few decades. Generally, gas-sensing materials include semiconducting metal oxides, vapour sensitive polymer, porous silicon, etc. Based on the gas-sensing principle of adsorption/desorption of target gas molecules on the sensors’ surface, significant enhancement in sensitivity could be achieved by increasing the interfacial contact between the sensors’ surface and analytes (target gases). Carbon nanotubes (CNTs), due to their unique electron transport phenomenon, have proven their ability to utilize them as sensing material in conductometric gas sensors. This chapter consists of three major sections. First section contains studies about the fundamentals of gas sensors and definitions of technical parameters used to characterize them. Second section describes up-to-date structural and chemical studies of the CNTs in detail in connection with the dependence of electrical transport phenomena upon these properties. Their gas-sensing mechanism and several literature reports about such investigations are also quoted and explained in easy language. Third section describes CNTs-polymer nanocomposites for conductometric gas sensors, which have been described in details and a comprehensive way. Conclusions have been drawn, and references are enlisted at the end of the chapter.
Part of the book: Carbon Nanotubes