DEVELOPMENT OF BINARY METAL OXIDES NANOMATERIALS FOR ETHYLENE GAS DETECTION

• Main Author: Prayoga, Adyatma
• Format: Final Project
• Language: Indonesia
• Online Access: https://digilib.itb.ac.id/gdl/view/72868
• Institution: Institut Teknologi Bandung

The damaged fruits that happen during supply chain or known as food loss is one of the common problems in the agricultural industry. One of the causes that lead to damaged fruits, especially for climacteric fruits, are from the role of ethylene gas (C2H4) produced by the fruits. Detection of ethylene gas using a metal oxide based chemiresistive method has the potential to solve this problem. In this research, ethylene gas sensors using metal oxide materials ZnO, MoO3, TiO2, Fe2O3, and SnO2 with nanorods morphology will be synthesized. Then, these materials will be characterized using the x-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and the Brunauer-Emmet-Teller method (BET) and tested for their detection performance by direct exposure to ethylene gas at 20 ppm. ZnO, MoO3, TiO2, and Fe2O3 have been successfully synthesized and characterized with the structure of nanorods and SnO2 with the structure of imperfect nanorods. Based on the test results, it was found that Fe2O3 and ZnO have a higher sensitivity compared to other materials at low working temperatures. The sensitivity obtained in the test shows that there is a relationship between sensitivity with d-band center model and the oxygen vacancy formation energy of each material, although these two parameters still cannot explain the kinetics of the reaction from the detection of ethylene gas. It was also found that the specific surface area could not explain the difference in performance between materials.