The p-type semiconducting copper oxides (CuO and Cu 2 O) are promising materials for gas sensors, owing to their characteristic oxygen adsorption properties and low operation temperature. In this study, the sensing performance of a CuO-based chemiresistor is significantly enhanced by incorporating Ag nanoparticles on high-resolution p-type CuO/Cu 2 O nanopattern channels. The high-resolution CuO/Cu 2 O/Ag nanochannel is fabricated using a unique top-down nanolithographic approach. The gas response (ΔR/R a ) of the CuO/Cu 2 O/Ag gas sensor increases by a maximum factor of 7.3 for various volatile organic compounds compared with a pristine CuO/Cu 2 O gas sensor. The sensors exhibit remarkable sensitivity (ΔR/R a = 8.04) at 125 parts per billion (ppb) for acetone analytes. As far as it is known, this is the highest sensitivity achieved for p-type metal oxide semiconductor (MOS)-based gas sensors compared to previous studies. Furthermore, the outstanding gas responses observed in this study are superior to the most of n-type MOS-based gas sensors. The high sensitivity of the sensor is attributed to i) the high resolution (≈30 nm), high aspect ratio (≈12), and ultrasmall grain boundaries (≈10 nm) of the CuO/Cu 2 O nanopatterns and ii) the electronic sensitization and chemical sensitization effects induced by incorporating Ag nanoparticles on the CuO/Cu 2 O channels.
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