Photo Assisted Volatile Organic Compounds Adsorption Studies on Organic Molecules Functionalized Zno Nanostructures for Chemical Sensing Applications

Abstract

The consumption of contaminated/spoiled food causes numerous harmful health effects such as diarrhea, allergies, cancer, asthma, etc. The spoiled food product emits volatile organic compounds (VOCs) based on the degree of degradation or decomposition from its nature. Hence, there is a need for the development of novel detection techniques for food freshness monitoring. The VOCs from contaminated food products can be identified through the non-destructive method i.e. chemical sensing. Various nanomaterials are used for the development of chemical sensors for VOC monitoring such as semiconductor metal oxides (SMOs), organic molecules, hybrid nanostructures, etc. newlineIn this thesis, the pure zinc oxide (ZnO) and organic molecules functionalized ZnO hybrid nanostructures are utilized for the VOC adsorption studies at room temperature (25 °C) using scanning Kelvin probe (SKP) system with a surface photovoltage (SPV) module. Initially, the pure ZnO was synthesized through the precipitation method by varying the pH of the final solution. ZnO nanostructures has showed better adsorption towards donor gas molecules at basic pH due to high surface area, high defects, high bandgap, and less particle size newline