Facial synthesis of V-doped α-MoO3 nanoparticles for potential ethanol/alcohol sensors

The pure and vanadium doped α-MoO3 nanoparticles have been synthesized via a facile liquid state chemical reaction process. The annealed powder was then characterized by various analysis techniques. Thermal Gravimetric Analysis (TGA), x-ray diffraction (XRD), Scanning electron microscopy (SEM), Energy dispersive x-ray analysis (EDAX), Raman spectroscopy, UV visible spectroscopy, and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) analysis have been used to analyze the changes in thermal, structural, morphology, functional and optical property of prepared samples. The results from the structural characterization showed no distortions and phase change in the structure of α-MoO3 with an increase in doping concentration of V-element up to 8% and Raman confirms the result obtained from XRD. BET reveals that when vanadium doping increases, the surface area of the samples increases. It was also discovered that as the vanadium concentration in MoO3 increases, the optical band gap reduces. The impact of V-doping on MoO3’s gas sensing performance was investigated. The study concludes the response towards the gases increases with an increase in the concentration of V-doping. The measured response for ethanol and methanol is almost 10 times higher than other gases which show good selectivity towards alcohol. The response time decreases from 175 s to 37 s (100 ppm) whereas recovery time increases from 120 s to 326 s (100 ppm) with an increase in doping concentration in MoO3.