CeO2 decorated SnO2 hollow spheres were successfully synthesized via a two-step hydrothermal strategy. The morphology and structures of as-obtained CeO2/SnO2 composites were analyzed by various kinds of techniques. The SnO2 hollow spheres with uniform size around 300 nm were self-assembled with SnO2 nanoparticles and were hollow with a diameter of about 100 nm. The CeO2 nanoparticles on the surface of SnO2 hollow spheres could be clearly observed. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy results confirmed the existence of Ce(3+) and the increased amount of both chemisorbed oxygen and oxygen vacancy after the CeO2 decorated. Compared with pure SnO2 hollow spheres, such composites revealed excellent enhanced sensing properties to ethanol. When the ethanol concentration was 100 ppm, the sensitivity of the CeO2/SnO2 composites was 37, which was 2.65-times higher than that of the primary SnO2 hollow spheres. The sensing mechanism of the enhanced gas sensing properties was also discussed.

This paper presents a facile hydrolysis reaction and annealing for preparing a novel hierarchical nanoheterostructure via assembly of α-FeO nanorods onto multiwall carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) backbones. The as-synthesized nanocomposites were characterized using XRD (X-ray diffraction), FESEM (Field emission scanning electron microscopy), TEM (Transmission electron microscopy), XPS (X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy) and BET (Surface Area and Porosity System). The observations showed uniform α-FeO nanorods approximately 100-200 nm in length and 50-100 nm in diameter that were hierarchically assembled onto the surface of the MWCNTs. The formation of the heterostructure was investigated by observing the evolution of the microstructure of the products at different reaction times. The X-ray photoelectron spectra (XPS) showed that the ability of the absorbing oxygen was enhanced by the formation of the heterostructure composites. Moreover, as a proof-of-concept presentation, the novel CNTs@α-FeO hierarchical heterostructure acted as a gas sensitive material. Significantly, the composites exhibited excellent sensing properties for acetone with high sensitivity, exceptional selectivity and good reproducibility. The response of the CNTs@α-FeO sensor to 100 ppm acetones at 225 °C was nearly 35, which was superior to the single α-FeO nanorods with a response of 16, and the detection limit of the sensor was 500 ppb. The enhanced properties were mainly attributed to the unique structure and p-n heterojunction between the CNTs and the α-FeO nanorods.

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Particle Filter (PF) is a sophisticated model estimation technique based on simulation. Due to the natural limitations of PF, two problems, namely particle impoverishment and sample size dependency, frequently occur during the particles updating stage and these problems will limit the accuracy of the estimation results. In order to alleviate these problems, Ant Colony Optimization is incorporated into the generic PF before the updating stage. After executing the Ant Colony optimization, impoverished particle samples will be re-positioned and closer to their locally highest likelihood distribution function. Our experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can realize better tracking performance when comparing to the generic PF, the Extended Kalman Filter and other enhanced versions of PF.