High sensitivity n-butanol gas sensor based on Ho-doped SnO2 nanoparticles

In this paper, series of Ho-doped SnO2 gas sensors were utilized for n-butanol gas detection. The results displayed that minor Ho doping concentration could remarkably improve the sensitivity of SnO2 to n-butanol gas, and the response to 50 ppm of n-butanol gas of 1.0 Ho/SnO2 based sensor reached 160 at 160 °C, which was 4.11 times to that of SnO2 sensor. The enhanced n-butanol gas sensing performance was ascribed to the reduced particle size, the increased BET surface area and oxygen vacancies concentration.