Synthesis of SnO2 nanostructures from 1D to 3D via a facile hydrothermal method and their gas sensing properties

Morphologies frequently play a critical role in determining the properties of nanomaterials. In current researches, we successfully synthesized varieties of SnO2 nanostructures from 1D to 3D via a facile hydrothermal method. The as-obtained samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. Then the plausible growth mechanism are proposed in detail. Furthermore, PEG and CO(NH2)(2) may have an effect on the formation of 1D and 2D nanostructures of SnO2 as aggregation and template, respectively. The gas sensing properties of SnO2 nanostructures from 1D to 3D toward ethanol were investigated. Surprisingly, we noticed that SnO2 nanosheets show the highest gas sensing response while the nanospheres is opposite, which provided a substantial promising candidate of gas sensors and further indicated that gas sensing properties can be enhanced by tailoring the morphologies of nanomaterials in practical application.