A Statistical Analysis of Response and Recovery Times: The Case of Ethanol Chemiresistors Based on Pure SnO2

Year: 2022

Authors: Ponzoni A.

Autors Affiliation: -National Institute of Optics (INO) Unit of Brescia, National Research Council (CNR), 25123 Brescia, Italy;
-National Institute of Optics (INO) Unit of Lecco, National Research Council (CNR), 23900 Lecco, Italy

Abstract: Response and recovery times are among the most important parameters for gas sensors. Their optimization has been pursued through several strategies, including the control over the morphology of the sensitive material. The effectiveness of these approaches is typically proven by comparing different sensors studied in the same paper under the same conditions. Additionally, tables comparing the results of the considered paper with those available in the literature are often reported. This is fundamental to frame the results of individual papers in a more general context; nonetheless, it suffers from the many differences occurring at the experimental level between different research groups. To face this issue, in the present paper, we adopt a statistical approach to analyze the response and recovery times reported in the literature for chemiresistors based on pure SnO2 for ethanol detection, which was chosen as a case study owing to its available statistic. The adopted experimental setup (of the static or dynamic type) emerges as the most important parameter. Once the statistic is split into these categories, morphological and sensor-layout effects also emerge. The observed results are discussed in terms of different diffusion phenomena whose balance depends on the testing conditions adopted in different papers.

Journal/Review: SENSORS

Volume: 22 (17)      Pages from: 6346-1  to: 6346-18

KeyWords: metal oxides; chemiresistors; response time; recovery time; nanowires; nanoparticles; ethanol; diffusion; thermo-diffusion
DOI: 10.3390/s22176346