Preparation of Functionalized Nano-Oxides and Its Application in Sensing

Dear Colleagues,

Metal oxide (MOX) gas sensors, also known as chemoresistive gas sensors, are important components in a wide range of applications such as environmental monitoring, the control of industrial processes in general and of chemical processes in particular, or personal safety at home and at the workplace. With the emergence of nanotechnologies, metal oxide nanomaterials (compounds with at least one external dimension between 1 nm and 100 nm) have become suitable candidates for gas sensing applications. They possess unique physical and chemical properties (such as a high surface-to-volume ratio and quantum confinement effects) that promote high sensor performance (stability, sensitivity, selectivity). Among these metal oxide nanomaterials, WO₃, SnO₂, ZnO, CuO, etc., are characterized by their reliability in detecting various toxic gases with sufficient sensitivity and good reproducibility. However, they also suffer from some drawbacks that influence their usability, such as a lack of selectivity and high working temperature. These shortcomings can be overcome by the functionalization of those nanomaterials with a wide range of additives such as metal/metal oxide nanoparticles, polymers, transition metal dichalcogenides, or carbon nanomaterials. Various conceptual routes to functionalized low-dimensional metal oxide nanomaterials are available, based either on the synthesis and combination of the components separately (multistep) or by direct synthesis of the functionalized material (single-step), such as spin coating and dip coating techniques, air-brushing, multitarget magnetron sputtering deposition, chemical vapor deposition, and sol–gel.

This Special Issue will highlight the recent developments in the preparation of gas sensors based on functionalized metal oxide nanomaterials that show promising results in terms of sensitivity, selectivity, humidity, cross-sensitivity, and low-temperature detection.

Dr. Annanouch Fatima Ezahra
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Nanomaterials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• semiconductors
• metal oxides
• gas sensors
• functionalization
• decoration
• nanomaterials
• nanocomposites
• nanostructures
• heterojunction
• toxic gases