A phenomenological investigation on Chlorine intercalated Layered Double Hydroxides used as room temperature gas sensors

In this paper, a phenomenological study of Layered Double Hydroxide sensing properties respect to common pollutants is presented. Layered Double Hydroxides are a class of nanomaterials characterized by a large surface/volume ratio, able to strongly interact with a wide amount of different chemical compounds. Layered Double Hydroxides materials are also relatively easy to achieve by different synthesis methods on a multiplicity of substrates. Although their characteristics make these materials promising candidates to act as gas sensor, Layered Double Hydroxide gas sensing properties have not still been intensively investigated. To this purpose, a chlorine-intercalated Zn/Al-Layered Double Hydroxide layer is grown by hydrothermal technique on an interdigitated finger array to achieve a resistive gas sensor. The sensing layer has been characterized by Scanning Electron Microscope, X-Ray Diffraction and Energy-Dispersive X-Ray Spectroscopy and then its sensing characteristics have been successfully investigated at room temperature on five common volatile compounds (CO, CO2, NO, NO2, CH4) at six different concentrations. The results demonstrate that Layered Double Hydroxide have interesting properties as low temperature sensing tool for a large range of volatile compounds. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.