Nanocrystalline tin oxide nanofibers deposited by a novel focused electrospinning method. Application to the detection of TATP precursors

Abstract

A new method of depositing tin dioxide nanofibers in order to develop chemical sensors is presented. It involves an electrospinning process with in-plane electrostatic focusing over micromechanized substrates. It is a fast and reproducible method. After an annealing process, which can be performed by the substrate heaters, it is observed that the fibers are intertwined forming porous networks that are randomly distributed on the substrate. The fiber diameters oscillate from 100 nm to 200 nm and fiber lengths reach several tens of microns. Each fiber has a polycrystalline structure with multiple nano-grains. The sensors have been tested for the detection of acetone and hydrogen peroxide (precursors of the explosive triacetone triperoxide, TATP) in air in the ppm range. High and fast responses to these gases have been obtained. © 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.This work has been supported by the Spanish Science and Innovation Ministry under the projects TEC2010-21357-C05-04 and TEC2013-48147-C6-4-R. Authors want to thank University of Extremadura for SEM and XRD analysis. We acknowledge support by the CSIC Open Access Publication Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI)Peer Reviewe