Synthesis of metal oxide nanostructure and its characterization as gas pollutant monitoring

The characteristics of metal oxide thin films have been studied for gas pollutant monitoring systems. The metal oxide sensitive layers of ZnO are deposited by sol gel method using a chemical bath deposition technique at moderate temperature. The resulting thin films have been characterized using XRD and SEM to confirm the surface structure of the film. The scanning electron microscopy reveals that ZnO thin films have a nanostructure morphology which is supposed to open a larger area to the gas targeted. The sensor device was prepared using alumina as a substrate and a gold finger electrode on the top of the sensors. Gas pollutant monitoring systems have been developed using the resulting sensor device after the calibrating process. The gas monitoring system can measure and save the data in the system so that the trend of measured pollutant can be analyzed for a certain period of time. The design and electronics structure of the gas pollutant monitoring system in terms of CO emission are described. This monitoring system can be used as a sensing node and can form a dense real-time environmental monitoring network.