Preparation of porphyrin/ZnO organic-inorganic sensor and its hydrogen sensing property at low temperature ☆

A gas sensor based on a microbelt of ZnO coated with fluorinated tetraphenylporphyrin (H2TPPF) layer structured islands was developed for detection of hydrogen at low temperature. ZnO single microbelt was synthesized by chemical vapour deposition (CVD) at 500-600 ºC, and coated with H2TPPF directly via supersonic molecular beam deposition (SuMBD) for gas sensing application. The morphology of the ZnO-H2TPPF microbelt sensor was examined by field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The diameter and length of the microbelt were 5 µm and 220 µm, respectively. The porphyrin islands height was about a couple of microns. The fabricated sensor showed a good response to hydrogen at quite low working temperature. The mechanism of the hybrid sensor needs to be studied further in future.