Hydrothermal synthesis of copper (׀׀) oxide-nanoparticles with highly enhanced BTEX gas sensing performance using chemiresistive sensor.

In the present work, the cost effective and facile hydrothermal synthesis technique was adopted to synthesize the copper (׀׀) oxide (CuO)-Nanoparticles (NPs). Physico-chemical characterization of the synthesized CuO-NPs was done by X-ray diffraction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), Ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy (UV-Vis), and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) analysis were carried out to study the structural, optical, and surface morphology of nanomaterial. XRD analysis revealed that the synthesized CuO-NPs had monoclinic structure and the average crystallite size is 20 nm. FTIR spectra indicate the vibrational bands of metal oxygen bonds (Cu-O). UV-visible absorption spectra were utilized to determine the energy band gap (Eg) of the CuO-NPs. In addition, we fabricated the chemiresistive sensor using synthesized CuO-NPs for detecting Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs). These results demonstrate that CuO-NPs based chemiresistive sensor is ideal for qualitative detection of BTEX chemicals vapors (i.e. Benzene, Toluene, Ethylbenzene, and Xylene).