A stable and highly sensitive room-temperature liquefied petroleum gas sensor based on nano-cubes/cuboids of zinc antimonate

Abstract

Trirutile zinc antimonate (ZnSb₂O₆) nano-cubes/cuboids have been fabricated by a sol–gel spin-coating method using polyethylene glycol (PEG) as the structure-directing agent. The fabricated films were characterized for surface morphology, along with structural, FT-IR and thermal analysis. The crystallite size of ZnSb₂O₆ is found to be 35 nm. The fabricated films have been tested for the detection of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) and carbon dioxide (CO₂) gas leakage at room temperature (27 °C). They exhibit fairly high sensitivity (1.73), low response and recovery times (∼41 and 95 s, respectively), and good reproducibility and stability (99.2%) at room temperature for the detection of LPG leakage. Based on these observations, the fabricated film has the potential to be used as a LPG sensor at room temperature.