Micro- and nano-structured metal oxides based chemical sensors: an overview.

This article examines various kinds of chemical sensors, their mechanism of operation and the ways to improve their performance. It reports the results of exploratory investigation of binary composite polycrystalline thick-films such as SnO2-WO3, SnO2-In2O3, and SnO2-ZnO for the detection of volatile organic compound (isopropanol) are reported. It also contains an overview on the status of the new types of metal oxide based nanostructured sensors, such as nano belts, nanorods, nanotubes, nanofibers, nanocomposites, etc.