Structural, Optical And Ethanol Gas Sensing Properties Of In2O3 And Dy3+:In2O3 Nanoparticles

This paper reports the structural, optical and ethanol gas sensing properties of In2O3 and 5% Dy3+ doped In2O3 nanoparticles. The simple cost-effective hydrolysis assisted co-precipitation method was adopted. Synthesized samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and UV-visible spectroscopy (UV-vis) techniques. XRD revealed that synthesized nanoparticles have cubic bixbyite phase. The lattice parameter, strain and crystallite size have been calculated by using the Williamson-Hall plots. UV-vis spectroscopy showed the red shift in the optical band gap due to Dy3+ doping in In2O3 nanoparticles. For ethanol gas sensing properties, the nanoparticles were applied as thick film onto alumina substrate and tested at different operating temperatures. The results showed that the optimum operating temperature of both the gas sensors is 300 degrees C. At optimum operating temperature, the response of In2O3 and Dy3+:In2O3 gas sensor towards 250 ppm ethanol was found to be 9.65 and 37.80. The investigations revealed that the addition of Dy3+ as a dopant enhanced the sensing response of In2O3 nanoparticles appreciably.