Zinc oxide (ZnO) is a unique and important metal oxide semiconductor for its valuable and huge applications with wide band gap ( 3.37 eV) and most promising candidate for gas sensor due to its high surface-to-volume ratio, good biocompatibility, stability, and high electron mobility. Due these properties, metal oxide shows good crystallinity, higher carrier mobility, and good chemical and thermal stability at moderately high temperatures. In this chapter nanostructures have been investigated, main focus being their synthesis and sensing mechanism of different toxic chemicals, synthesized by thermal evaporation through vapor transport method using vapor-liquid-solid (VLS) mechanism. The doped ZnO nanobelts showed significant enhanced sensing properties at room temperature, indicating that doping is very much effective in improving the methane CH4 sensing of ZnO nanostructures. ZnO nanowires showed a remarkable sensing response toward acetone and CH4 gas.
Part of the book: Gas Sensors