Abstract
Herein, the facile growth, characterization and methanol gas sensing application of hollow ZnO–SnO2 urchins have been reported. The growth of hollow ZnO–SnO2 urchins was done by thermal evaporation process characterized by various characterization techniques such as field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) equipped with energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman-scattering and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. The detailed characterization confirmed that the grown ZnO–SnO2 material have hollow spherical shaped structures with pointed spikes on their outer surfaces which resemble like urchins and exhibited well-crystallinity. The grown hollow ZnO–SnO2 urchins were used as an effective electrode material to fabricate methanol gas sensor which exhibited high gas response of 4.636 with very low recovery and response times of 13 s and 10 s, respectively at an optimized temperature of 320 °C.