Room temperature CO and H2 sensing with carbon nanoparticles.

We report on a shell-shaped carbon nanoparticle (SCNP)-based gas sensor that reversibly detects reducing gas molecules such as CO and H(2) at room temperature both in air and inert atmosphere. Crystalline SCNPs were synthesized by laser-assisted reactions in pure acetylene gas flow, chemically treated to obtain well-dispersed SCNPs and then patterned on a substrate by the ion-induced focusing method. Our chemically functionalized SCNP-based gas sensor works for low concentrations of CO and H(2) at room temperature even without Pd or Pt catalysts commonly used for splitting H(2) molecules into reactive H atoms, while metal oxide gas sensors and bare carbon-nanotube-based gas sensors for sensing CO and H(2) molecules can operate only at elevated temperatures. A pristine SCNP-based gas sensor was also examined to prove the role of functional groups formed on the surface of functionalized SCNPs. A pristine SCNP gas sensor showed no response to reducing gases at room temperature but a significant response at elevated temperature, indicating a different sensing mechanism from a chemically functionalized SCNP sensor.

Modulating electronic transport properties of carbon nanotubes to improve the thermoelectric power factor via nanoparticle decoration.

Nanoparticle decoration on carbon nanotubes was employed to modulate their electrical conductance and thermopower and thereby improved the thermoelectric power factor. Nanotubes were made into films by spraying nanotube solutions on glass substrates, and then the films were immersed in different concentrations of CuSO(4) or HAuCl(4) solutions for various time periods. Copper ions in the solutions were reduced on nanotubes by obtaining electrons from zinc electrodes, whose reduction potential is lower than that of copper (galvanic displacement). Gold ions were reduced on nanotubes by both silver counter electrodes and spontaneous reaction due to larger reduction potentials than those of nanotubes. These reactions made electrons donated to (copper incorporation) or withdrawn from (gold incorporation) nanotubes depending on the difference in their work functions and reduction potentials, resulting in considerable changes in electron transport. In this paper, a series of experiments at different ion concentrations and reaction time periods were systematically performed in order to find optimum nanoparticle formation conditions and corresponding electronic transport changes for better thermoelectric power factor. Transport measurement results show that electronic properties can be considerably altered and modulated, resulting in 2-fold improvement in the thermoelectric power factor with 1 mM/30 min reaction. Reactions with solutions of a low metal ion concentration, such as 1 mM, yielded well-distributed small particles over large surface areas, which strongly affected electron transfer between nanoparticles and nanotubes. Successive copper and gold decorations on nanotubes made electrical conductance (or thermopower) serially decreased and increased (or increased and decreased) upon precipitating different metal particles. This transport behavior is believed to be from the changes in the Fermi level as a result of electron exchanges between reduced metals and nanotubes. Thermopower improvement after copper decoration can be attributed to the enlarged gap between the Fermi level and the mean of differential electrical conductivity. Such behaviors often appear when the Fermi level is shifted toward the spike-shape density of states in nanotubes due to anisotropic differential electrical conductivity. Finally, this study demonstrates that the thermoelectric power factor can be considerably increased by properly locating the Fermi level of carbon nanotubes with nanoparticles, providing promising opportunities of developing efficient organic thermoelectric materials as well as various electronic materials of desired properties.

Parallel patterning of nanoparticles via electrodynamic focusing of charged aerosols.

The development of nanodevices that exploit the unique properties of nanoparticles will require high-speed methods for patterning surfaces with nanoparticles over large areas and with high resolution. Moreover, the technique will need to work with both conducting and non-conducting surfaces. Here we report an ion-induced parallel-focusing approach that satisfies all requirements. Charged monodisperse aerosol nanoparticles are deposited onto a surface patterned with a photoresist while ions of the same polarity are introduced into the deposition chamber in the presence of an applied electric field. The ions accumulate on the photoresist, modifying the applied field to produce nanoscopic electrostatic lenses that focus the nanoparticles onto the exposed parts of the surface. We have demonstrated that the technique could produce high-resolution patterns at high speed on both conducting (p-type silicon) and non-conducting (silica) surfaces. Moreover, the feature sizes in the nanoparticle patterns were significantly smaller than those in the original photoresist pattern.