Abstract
This paper demonstrates a simple and facile method for fabrication of highly sensitive acetone chemical sensor using Gd-doped ZnO (GZO) nanopencils. The GZO nanopencils were synthesized in large quantity by simple and facile hydrothermal process at low-temperature and characterized in terms of their morphological, structural, compositional and optical properties. The detailed characterizations revealed that the prepared nanopencils are well-crystalline and possess good optical properties. The acetone chemical sensor fabricated based on GZO nanopencils exhibited very high-sensitive of 208 +/- 62 mu A mM(-1) cm(-2) and low experimental detection limit of 0.7 mM. The linear dynamic range of the fabricated sensor was 750 mu M to 100 mM in phosphate buffer (PBS). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first ever report on the fabrication of acetone chemical sensor based on Gd-doped ZnO nanostructures. The present work revealed that Gd-doped ZnO nanomaterials are one of the excellent candidates for the fabrication of efficient and effective chemical sensors.