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Gas Detection Applications Of Vertically Aligned Metal Oxide Nanowire Arrays, Haiqiao Su

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

To build novel electronic noses for mimicking biological olfactory systems that consist of olfactory receptor arrays with large surface area and massively-diversified chemical reactivity, three dimensional (3D) vertical aligned ZnO nanowire arrays were employed as active materials for gas detection. ZnO nanowire arrays share 3D structures similar to mammalian olfactory receptor arrays, with thousands of vertical nanowires providing a high reception area which can significantly enhance the sensors’ sensitivity. Meanwhile, with different material decorations (such as SnO₂, In₂O₃, WO₃ and polymers), each array of nanowires can produce a distinguishable response for each separate …