Varying annealing temperature to enhance xylene vapor sensing performance of CuFe2O4 nanoparticles prepared by solvothermal method

In this work, CuFe2O4 nanoparticles (NPs) were synthesized through solvothermal method and then annealed at different temperatures. The tetragonal phase structure and chemical composition of the samples were measured by x-ray diffraction (XRD), the morphological features of the samples presenting nanoparticles were obtained by scanning electron microscopy (SEM), the details of the nanostructures about the resulting samples were determined by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and the compositions and elemental chemical states of the samples were analyzed by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The discussion systematically covers the influence of various annealing temperatures on the crystal morphology and topography of the resulting samples. The experimental results show that the CuFe2O4 NPs annealed at 500 °C have superior gas-sensitive properties towards xylene with high response, excellent selectivity, and therefore have some potential to develop a new, budget sensor for xylene detection. At last, the xylene sensing mechanism of CuFe2O4 NPs was discussed.