Facile Preparation of a ZnO/SnO2-Based Gas Sensor Array by Inkjet Printing for Gas Analysis with BPNN.

A gas sensor array based on ZnO/SnO₂ thin films has been designed and fabricated to recognize and quantify various kinds gases, such as ethanol, CO, NO_x, and SO₂, in combination with a backpropagation neural network (BPNN). Inkjet printing was adopted for facile preparation of the ZnO/SnO₂-based thin sensing films with different metal additives due to its convenient control of composition, structure, and patterning. Precursor inks were synthesized using the sol-gel method. BPNN was applied to identify the gas species and estimate their concentration. Simulation results demonstrated that the gas sensor array could successfully identify the target gases, with overall prediction accuracy of the BPNN of 93%. This work shows that the combination of inkjet printing to prepare a thin-film gas sensor array with a BPNN is a convenient, low-cost, and efficient approach for qualitative and quantitative analysis of mixed gases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]