Synthesis Of Nanostructured Iron-antimonate and Its Application In Liquefied Petroleum Gas sensor

¹Nanomaterials and Sensors Research Laboratory, Department of Physics, University of Lucknow, Lucknow 226007, U.P., India

²Department of Applied Physics, School for Physical Sciences, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow 226025, U.P., India

³DST Unit on Nanosciences, Department of Chemical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur, U.P., India

Adv. Mater. Lett., 2012, 3 (2), pp 154-160

DOI: 10.5185/amlett.2011.11318

Publication Date (Web): Apr 14, 2012

Copyright © IAAM-VBRI Press

E-mail: balchandra_yadav@rediffmail.com

Abstract

In this paper we report the synthesis of iron-antimonate (FeSbO₄) via co-precipitation method for the LPG sensing application. X-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and Energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDAX) were used to confirm the crystal structure, crystallite size, surface morphology and elemental composition of the sensing material. Our XRD results confirm the single phase formation with tetragonal crystal structure of the synthesized material. Extremely broad reflections were observed indicating nanosized particle nature of the material obtained. The estimated value of average crystallite size was found 3 nm. Optical characterizations were done using UV-visible spectrophotometer and the value of energy band gap was found 3.8 eV by Tauc plot. Fine powder resulted from the chemical co-precipitation reaction was used to prepare the LPG sensing element in the form of pellet. The average sensor response of the FeSbO₄ pellet was 2.2. LPG sensor based on iron-antimonate shows 97% reproducibility after one month, which illustrates the stability of the fabricated sensor. Electrical properties of iron-antimonate in air were also investigated. 

Keywords

Iron-antimonate, surface morphology, chemical co-precipitation, LPG sensor