Faculty Publications
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Item A scalable screen-printed high performance ZnO-UV and Gas Sensor: Effect of solution combustion(Elsevier Ltd, 2020) Manjunath, G.; Pujari, S.; Patil, D.R.; Mandal, S.In the present study, scalable screen-printed Zinc Oxide (ZnO) based sensor was demonstrated to sense ultra-violet irradiation and gases such as ammonia (NH3), ethanol (C2H5OH), liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), chlorine (Cl2) and hydrogen sulphide (H2S). A facile solution combustion synthesis (SCS) route was adopted to synthesize high purity, homogeneous, nanocrystalline and highly reactive ZnO with favourable morphologies, microstructural parameters for the sensing performance using low-cost and less-violent fuels such as urea, citric acid and glycine. Fuel impacts on uniform particle size distribution, bond length, grain size, lattice strain enhanced the gas sensing potential in the synthesized powders. Films were fabricated by depositing synthesized powders on the glass substrate via screen printing approach using Na-carboxy methyl cellulose as a binder, water as a solvent and annealed at 500 °C for 2 h in ambient. Non-stoichiometric, phase pure and adhered thick films with optical band gap (3.17-3.25 eV) imparted gas sensing properties because of recombination of an electron-hole pair and intrinsic defects. ZnO films obtained from glycine-fuel system exposed to 100 ppm of NH3, C2H5OH, Cl2 and 50 ppm of H2S, exhibited good gas sensitivity of ~8, 5, 3 and 10 at an operating temperature of 50, 100, 200 and 100 °C respectively with a faster response and recovery speed. But, high sensitivity ~6 to 100 ppm of LPG at 350 °C in ZnO films from citric acid fuel-system. ZnO films obtained from glycine fuel system showed a high response to UV irradiation for exposing time of 90s. Low cost, high-performance sensor can be fabricated for the dual applications - alarming to prolonged exposure to harmful UV radiation and detection of a series of toxic and damaging gases. © 2019 Elsevier LtdItem A comparative study on enhancer and inhibitor of glycine–nitrate combustion ZnO screen-printed sensor: detection of low concentration ammonia at room temperature(Springer, 2020) Manjunath, G.; Pothukanuri, P.; Mandal, S.We report a comparative study on enhancing and inhibiting the sensing performance of Sr-doped ZnO (Sr0.01 Zn0.99O) and RuO2-activated Sr-doped ZnO heterostructured sensors towards the low concentration (? 50 ppm) of ammonia gas at ambient. Sub-microns sized with high specific surface area, high reactive, oxygen-deficient Sr-doped ZnO particles were synthesized at low temperature (196 °C) through facile glycine–nitrate solution combustion synthesis (SCS) method. Porous, adhered screen-printed film of Sr-doped ZnO with optical bandgap (3.22 eV) was dip-coated using 0.02 M RuCl3 aqueous solution to obtain RuO2 activation. Smaller crystallite size and lesser lattice distortion obtained with Sr-doping in ZnO enhance the gas response (S = 71) towards the 50 ppm of ammonia gas at room temperature. RuO2-activated Sr-doped ZnO sensor associated with lesser oxygen vacancies and a lower concentration of chemisorbed oxygen species due to passivation layer and no-spill-over activity of RuO2, which inhibits the gas response from 71 to 3. Sr-doped ZnO-based sensor shows high selectivity towards ammonia against 50 ppm of volatile organic compound (VOCs) vapor. Expeditious sensor kinetics (response time and recovery time) in the Sr-doped ZnO sensor was observed, in which smaller crystallite size offers a shorter distance for the diffusion of oxygen vacancies (Vo). Ultra-high-sensitive and selective sensors with ease and economical fabrication offer feasibility in industries and domestic applications where detection of the less concentration ammonia vapor is crucial. © 2020, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.Item Room-temperature detection of ammonia and formaldehyde gases by La xBa1?xSnO3?? (x = 0 and 0.05) screen printed sensors: effect of ceria and ruthenate sensitization(Springer Science and Business Media Deutschland GmbH, 2021) Manjunath, G.; Vardhan, R.V.; Praveen, L.L.; Pothukanuri, P.; Mandal, S.In the present work, gas sensing properties of the screen printed ceria and ruthenate-sensitized BaSnO3 (BSO) with La doping heterostructure sensors towards the detection of ammonia and formaldehyde gases at room temperature were studied. Adhered, porous screen printed films with different morphologies were obtained by depositing the LaxBa1?xSnO3?? (x = 0 and 0.05) powder particles prepared by the polymerized complex method. Ceria and ruthenate sensitization for screen printed LaxBa1?xSnO3?? (x = 0.05) film was processed through dip-coating in the 0.03 M aqueous solution of CeCl3 and RuCl3, respectively. La-doped BaSnO3 (LBSO) sensor with smaller crystallites, needle-like morphology and high concentration of oxygen vacancies exhibited superior gas response of 65 and 29 towards 50 ppm of ammonia and formaldehyde gases, respectively. Superabundant sensitization of ceria and ruthenate reduced the oxygen vacancy and structural open porosity in the LBSO sensor; therefore, the ammonia gas response was decreased from 65 to 14 and 3, respectively, whereas the formaldehyde gas response was reduced to less than 1/6th times the LBSO sensor. Limit of detection of LBSO sensors was estimated to be ~ 1 and ~ 2 ppm against ammonia and formaldehyde, respectively. The presence of fluorite structured phase ceria with high oxygen atoms storage capacity facilitates the rapid oxidization of analyte gases and caused the expeditious response (75 s) and recovery (60 s) in CeOx-sensitized LBSO sensor. This study might give a new insight into the development of doped and sensitized BSO-based gas sensors operating at ambient conditions. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE part of Springer Nature.Item Ultra-sensitive clogging free combustible molecular precursor-based screen-printed ZnO sensors: a detection of ammonia and formaldehyde breath markers(Springer, 2021) Manjunath, G.; Pothukanuri, P.; Mandal, S.It is beneficial to develop the cost-effective, ultra-sensitive ZnO-based sensor for the rapid detection and quantification of the ammonia and formaldehyde breath markers under ambient conditions. Here, one-step solution route was adopted to formulate the aqueous combustible molecular precursor-based clogging free screen-printing ink consisting of zinc nitrate as an oxidizer, glycine as fuel, and eco-friendly binder sodium carboxymethylcellulose. The formulated precursor was deposited on the glass substrates via a screen-printing technique followed by annealing at different temperatures for an hour. Screen printed ZnO sensors processed at 500 °C with high crystallinity, less lattice distortion, low optical bandgap, and high concentration of donor defects showed remarkably high NH3 gas response ~ 336 and a moderate HCHO response ~ 16.4 towards the 5 ppm and 10 ppm of the respective gases. In addition it's LOD values is drawn as 0.6 ppm and 2.9 ppm for NH3 and HCHO gases, respectively, and exhibits superior selectivity towards ammonia. Faster diffusion of oxygen vacancies (Vo) in the smaller crystallites resulted expeditious sensor kinetics in the screen-printed sensor processed at 400 °C. Response and recovery time were recorded to be 50 s and 50 s to the 5 ppm of NH3, respectively. The crystallinity-dominant domain overcomes the adverse effect of larger grains on the gas response of screen-printed ZnO sensor processed at 500 °C. Robust, scalable, and cost-effective screen-printed ZnO conductometric sensors demonstrated here has a potential application in clinical diagnosis, and also in monitoring the NH3 and HCHO gases at low ppm-level. © 2021, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC part of Springer Nature.Item Ammonia gas detection by solution combustion-processed pristine & Ti-doped ZnO transparent films: a reverse effect of doping on gas response(Springer, 2023) Vardhan, R.V.; Manjunath, G.; Pothukanuri, P.; Mandal, S.In this contribution, pure, polycrystalline wurtzite crystal structured, spin-coated pristine ZnO and Ti-doped (1, 2, and 3 wt%) ZnO transparent films were accomplished at 400 °C through a facile solution combustion synthesis method. Crystallinity, roughness, and porosity in the pristine film were relatively higher than in the doped films. The demonstrated films were transparent, with ~ 70 to 90% in the visible region. The room temperature detection of ammonia (NH3) gas (25–100 ppm) was recognized in all the films. The pristine film revealed a superior gas response at every concentration of NH3 gas in contrast to all the doped films; it is probably due to comparatively high crystallinity, porosity, more oxygen vacancy concentration (1.788), and high fraction of adsorbed oxygen (20.55%). The film exhibited the highest gas response of 34.7 at 100 ppm of NH3 gas and a limit of detection of ~ 10.7 ppm with superior selectivity towards NH3 gas. Although doping enhanced the transparency but diminished the NH3 gas response due to the combined effect of deterioration in the mentioned properties achieved in pristine film. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.Item Tracing of Ammonia Gas by Solution-Combustion-Derived Pristine and Nb-Doped TiO2 Films: Beneficial Impact of Crystallinity and Adsorbed Oxygen on the Gas Response(Springer, 2023) Vardhan, R.V.; Manjunath, G.; Pothukanuri, P.; Mandal, S.The current work delivers room-temperature ammonia (NH3) gas-detectable pristine, Nb-doped TiO2 air- and vacuum-annealed films obtained through the solution-combustion process. Polycrystalline anatase crystal structured films without any dopant oxide phases were processed at 400°C on glass substrates. The crystallinity was higher in pristine films than in doped films; the morphological features were similar in all the films. The films were > 50% transparent, and the estimated optical energy band gap was greater in doped films than in pristine films. All the films detected NH3 gas (25 ppm to 100 ppm) at room temperature, and the gas response was highly dependent on the crystallinity and relative area fraction of adsorbed oxygen (% of OA). The vacuum-annealed pristine film exhibited a better gas response than the other films at all NH3 gas concentrations due to high crystallinity and % of OA (10.15%). The film demonstrated maximum gas response of ~16 towards 100 ppm of NH3 gas and displayed good selectivity. Even though the doping reduced the crystallite size from ~17 nm to ~9 nm, it also diminished the crystallinity of the films, which significantly impacted the deterioration of their gas response. © 2023, The Minerals, Metals & Materials Society.Item All-printed WO3 films on an Ag-interdigitated electrode derived from aqueous screen-printable inks for room-temperature ammonia gas detection(Institute of Physics, 2025) Praveen, L.L.; Singh, N.P.; Vardhan, R.V.; Mandal, S.In this work, all-printed tungsten oxide (WO3) sensors were fabricated from nanoparticle-based screen-printable inks, where the WO3 nanopowders were hydrothermally synthesized with various HCl concentrations to give enhanced room-temperature detection of ammonia (NH3) gas. The monoclinic phase of WC powders (calcined WO3) with square nanoplate-like morphology and porosities was identified from x-ray diffraction, field-emission scanning electron microscopy and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller surface area analysis. The silver precursor ink-derived interdigitated electrodes were found to be crystalline with an average finger width and Ag film thickness of 1 ± 0.4 mm and 3.8 ± 0.5 µm, respectively. The formulated WO3 inks with hydroxyethyl cellulose showed a thixotropic fluid-like behavior and exhibited a viscosity of ?9 × 104 mPa s, which is a key requirement for screen printing. Rheological study of the formulated WC inks revealed a thixotropic nature, with all WC inks showing a viscosity of 85 ± 3 Pa s and a recovery rate of 80% in the recovery stage. This work explains the role of pH in hydrothermally synthesis of WO3 by correlating the gas-sensing characteristics of the screen-printed sensors fabricated from formulated inks, where the WC-15 gas sensor showed a maximum gas response of ?340 towards 100 ppm of NH3 gas. This facile and cost-effective method for fabricating chemiresistive gas sensors could pave the way for the development of flexible and printable devices for ppb-level detection of NH3 gas and its monitoring. © 2025 IOP Publishing Ltd. All rights, including for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies, are reserved.Item Ultra-high ammonia gas response of phase-stabilized (Fe0.2Ni0.2Cr0.2Mn0.2Zn0.2)3O4-? high-entropy spinel oxide sensor array and its machine learning predictions(Elsevier Ltd, 2025) Praveen, L.L.; Upadhyay, B.; Potnuri, R.; Mandal, S.In this work, the gas sensing performance of phase-stabilized (FeNiMnZnCr)3O4 high-entropy spinel oxide (HSO) gas-sensors via screen-printing were investigated, where the HSO powders were synthesized via solution combustion synthesis (SCS) using three different fuels: citric acid, urea, and glucose. Although all HSO powders were obtained at 500 °C, the formation of stable spinel phase was evidenced at 600 °C. Among all fabricated sensors, G-800 gas sensor depicted a stable ultra-high response of ?3471 towards 100 ppm of ammonia gas along with a notable response of ?162 even at 10 ppm (where G means glucose and 800 represents calcination temperature in °C) and it demonstrated a strong device-to-device reproducibility with stability of ?35 days. A synergy of crystallinity and increased porosities from XRD and FESEM micrographs resulted in ultra-high gas-response towards ammonia gas compared to volatile organic compounds such as formaldehyde, methanol, and ethanol). The presence of defect band and oxygen vacancies observed from the Raman and XPS analysis, were complemented by the presence of porosities confirmed from BET surface area analysis. Subsequently, the machine learning (ML) algorithms are applied on sensor signals to estimate the concentration of ammonia gas, and among all the ML classifiers, RFC gave reasonably better predictions in three concentrations regimes with a good classification accuracy of 93.3 ± 5.3 %, 90 ± 7.5 %, and 83.3 ± 13.1 % for G-600, G-700, and G-800, respectively. The proposed ML studies enable accurate detection of hazardous ammonia levels using HSO-based sensors, showing strong potential for integration into diagnostic platforms targeting ammonia breath markers. © 2025 Elsevier B.V.Item Deep-eutectic solvent-assisted green synthesis of MAX-phase Cr2AlC and its 2D-MXene derivative Cr2CTxtowards room-temperature detection of ammonia gas(Elsevier Ltd, 2025) Lokeshwar, H.; Lakshmi Praveen, L.; Mandal, S.; Shakti, N.This study explores the novel and eco-friendly chemical etching of bulk Cr2AlC MAX phases using a deep eutectic solvent (DES) mixture of choline chloride (ChCl) and anhydrous ferric chloride (FeCl3) to synthesize chromium carbide (Cr2CTx) MXene nanolayers. ChCl-FeCl3enables a fluoride-free transformation approach to synthesize Cr2CTxMXene via selective etching of aluminium interlayers, resulting in mixed surface terminations (-O, -OH, -Cl) confirmed from bond vibrations observed in FTIR transmittance spectra. Also, the FESEM micrographs confirm the formation of Cr2CTxnanolayers with successful cleavage of Cr2AlC MAX phase nanolaminates identified from a distinct red shift of D-band with the highest ID/IGratio peak intensity ratio, confirming the presence of high defect concentration in Cr2CTxMXene. The hydrothermally synthesized SnO2powders exhibiting a rutile tetragonal phase average particle size of 35.8 ± 0.8 nm were mixed with Cr2CTxto formulate screen-printable inks for the fabrication of Cr2CTx, SnO2, and their composite Cr2CTx-SnO2gas sensors. The addition of Cr2CTxdemonstrated a detrimental effect on the gas-sensing performance of the SnO2sensor, which was further supported from XPS analysis. However, the SnO2sensor recorded the highest gas-response of ?452 towards 100 ppm of ammonia gas among all sensors, highlighting the role of oxygen defects confirmed from photoluminescence spectra. This work paves the way for a novel and eco-friendly etching approach of MAX-phases and helps in their research towards the development of ultra-sensitive gas sensors. © 2025 Elsevier Ltd and Techna Group S.r.l. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.