Synergistic enhancement in the sensing performance of a mixed-potential NH3 sensor using SnO2@CuFe2O4 sensing electrode
Graphical abstract
Introduction
The selective catalytic reduction (SCR) closed-loop control system has emerged as a prominent technique for controlling the nitrogen oxides (NOX) emissions from the all-purpose diesel engines. [1,2] In SCR, the nitrogen oxides (NOX) are in-situ reduced to produce nitrogen (N2) and water (H2O) by the application of a dedicated catalyst under the co-existence of oxygen (O2) and ammonia (NH3) according to the following equations–NH2CONH2 (Urea) + H2O (steam) → 2NH3 + CO24NO + 4NH3 + O2 (Air) → 4N2 + 6H2O2NO2 + 4NH3 + O2 (Air) → 3N2 + 6H2ONO + NO2 + 2NH3 → 2N2 + 3H2O
Typically, NH3 as a product of urea-water solution decomposition (Eq. 1) is fed directly into the exhaust chamber, while the closed-loop feedback control system benefits a precise control over the amount of dosing to avoid the leakage resulting in environmental and human-health issues. [3,4] Therefore, a high-performance NH3 sensor is needed to facilitate the on-board diagnosis (OBD) of NH3, downstream the SCR system. [5,6] Among various sensing technologies, solid-electrolyte based electrochemical gas sensors appeared to be the most promising candidates due to their excellent thermochemical stabilities under harsh conditions [7].
Over the past decade, various solid-electrolyte based NH3 sensors were developed, demonstrating potentiometric, amperometric, and impedance metric measurement operations. [[8], [9], [10]] While yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) has become a distinctive choice of electrolyte, researchers have focused upon identifying novel electrode materials for high sensitivity and selectivity. The majority of the investigations utilized noble-metals such as Au, Ag, etc. or their composite with metal oxides as the sensing electrode (SE) [[11], [12], [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19], [20], [21], [22]]. Miura and co-workers introduced an NH3 selective mixed-potential type sensor for the very first time utilizing NiO/Au electrode. [21] Moos and co-workers presented another approach by covering one of the identical Au electrodes with commercially available SCR catalyst (V2O5-WO3-TiO2) and found an excellent sensitivity towards NH3 [[14], [15], [16],19]. Tests downstream of an SCR catalyst showed that the sensor could detect a tiny ammonia slip. However, the high cost and issues related to the long-term stability of noble metal electrodes encouraged researchers to look for alternative all metal-oxide SEs, which could selectively detect NH3 at high temperatures. In this approach, the multi-cation metal oxide systems gained special attention in comparison to the single-cation metal oxide materials. [10,[23], [24], [25], [26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31]] Lu et al. synthesized several metal tungstates, MWO4 (M = Co, Zn, and Ni), and studied the NH3 sensing properties at 700 ℃. [29] The CoWO4 sintered at 800 ℃ displayed a response of −8 mV towards 100 ppm NH3 with reasonable cross-sensitivities towards hydrocarbons. Wang et al. synthesized a TiO2@WO3 core-shell composite and obtained excellent NH3 sensing characteristics. [30] Regretfully, the sensor also displayed a noticeable cross-sensitivity toward NO2.
Considering the tremendous effort in exploration for the suitable electrode materials, spinel-oxide materials remained as an unexplored area for mixed-potential type NH3 sensor despite their advantages such as ease of synthesis, high stability, and modulable functional properties. [[32], [33], [34], [35]] Among various spinel oxides, CuFe2O4, being considerably cheap to synthesize, has proved a great benefit in various electrochemical and adsorption applications; e.g. batteries, [36,37] catalysis [38,39], wastewater treatment [40,41] and sensors [[42], [43], [44]]. It was also investigated as a catalyst for ammonia oxidation or DeNOX purposes. [[45], [46], [47]] Dash and co-workers [42] investigated the potential application of CuFe2O4 and rGO-CuFe2O4 composites for chemiresistive gas sensors and found a substantially high sensitivity towards ammonia. Although the sensing mechanism of mixed-potential sensors is entirely distinctive from the chemiresistive one, the effects of selective adsorption on the electrode potential and sensing characteristics are well-known. [19,48] In this context, the materials with selective adsorbtivity towards a particular gas species; e.g. CuFe2O4 for ammonia could be promising SEs for the mixed-potential ammonia sensors. Therefore, for the first time to the authors’ knowledge, CuFe2O4 spinel-oxide is being examined as the NH3 selective electrode for a mixed-potential sensor. Since the microstructure of the electrode-electrolyte interface or Triple-phase boundaries (TPB) govern the electrocatalytic activity and sensing properties of the mixed-potential sensor [27,31,49], we also study the effect of electrode morphology over the sensing properties of CuFe2O4-SE. For a mixed-potential type sensor, it is well reported that composites of chemically distinct components could synergistically improve the sensing performance. [30,50] Tin oxide (SnO2), a state of art material for the chemiresistive sensors, has also demonstrated impressive electrochemical properties in several applications. [36,51] For mixed-potential sensors, the pure SnO2 displays very poor selectivity, resulting in no practical advantage. [20] However, its composite with metal or metal oxides has proved its great potential to be utilized for the sensing electrodes of mixed-potential sensor [50,[52], [53], [54]]. Therefore, we composited the CuFe2O4 with SnO2 nanocrystals by a solution-phase route and the resulting SnO2@CuFe2O4 was evaluated for the sensing characteristics in details. The prosperity of the presented composite system is that the individual components; CuFe2O4 and SnO2 do not react with each other under the sensor operating conditions. The SnO2@CuFe2O4 SE produced a response (ΔV) of −40 mV towards 80 ppm NH3, about double and quadruple of the response of bare CuFe2O4 and SnO2 electrodes, respectively. Also, it presented high cyclability, long term-durability, stability towards pO2 and pH2O variations and high selectivity to NH3. Finally, to perform an insightful analysis of the sensing mechanism, dc polarization curves and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy was employed over a variety of thermodynamic conditions.
Section snippets
Powder synthesis and sensor fabrication
The CuFe2O4 and SnO2@CuFe2O4 were synthesized by a solution-phase route. First, a stoichiometric amount of metal-ion precursors (Cu(NO3)23H2O and Fe(NO3)23H2O, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., United States) were dissolved in deionized water (D.I.W.). Subsequently, the chelating agent: citric acid and polymerizing agent: ethylene glycol was added (Molar ratio; M: C.A.: E.G. = 1:1:4), and the solution was heated at 80 ℃. While most of the water slowly evaporates during this heating, the resulting
Physical properties
Fig. 1a shows the profile matching of the XRD pattern of CuFe2O4 spinel-oxide powder calcined at 900 ℃. It was observed that the synthesized CuFe2O4 has a high level of crystallinity with a tetragonal lattice structure (s. g.: I-41/amd, #141). All the diffraction peaks corresponded well to the crystal planes of the standard crystallographic database (JCPDS #34-0425). The lattice parameter calculated from the profile matching was found to be a = b = 5.807 Å and c = 8.712 Å. The theoretical
Conclusion
Stabilized zirconia-based mixed-potential sensor was fabricated using CuFe2O4 spinel-oxide sensing electrodes and realized for the selective NH3 detection. It was determined that the sensing properties were significantly affected by the electrode morphology and extent of TPB lengths regulated through the sintering parameters. The NH3 sensing characteristics of the CuFe2O4-SE was further enhanced by compositing with SnO2 nanocrystals for which the SnO2@CuFe2O4 SE produced a response (ΔV) of
Declaration of Competing Interest
None.
Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No. 2018R1A5A1025224 and 2019R1F1A1064078).
Aman Bhardwaj received Master of Technology in Ceramic Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T-B.H.U.), Varanasi, India in 2017. He is currently pursuing his doctoral studies at the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Chonnam National University, Republic of Korea. His research interests include gas sensors, electrocatalysts, fuel cells and batteries.
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Aman Bhardwaj received Master of Technology in Ceramic Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T-B.H.U.), Varanasi, India in 2017. He is currently pursuing his doctoral studies at the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Chonnam National University, Republic of Korea. His research interests include gas sensors, electrocatalysts, fuel cells and batteries.
Aniket Kumar received his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Chemistry, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, India in 2018. He is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher in the Ionics Laboratory, School of Material Science and Engineering, Chonnam National University, Republic of Korea. His research interests include polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells, heterogenous and electrochemical catalysis, adsorption chemistry and gas sensing.
Uk Sim received his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Seoul National University, Republic of Korea in 2016. Presently, he is an Assistant Professor at the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Chonnam National University (CNU), Republic of Korea. At CNU, his research interests include the development of nanomaterials for energy production, conversion, and storage applications.
Ha-Ni Im received her Ph.D. degree from the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Chonnam National University, Republic of Korea in 2015. Since then she is working as a researcher in the Ionics laboratory and her research interests include oxygen transport and electrochemical properties of ceramic materials.
Sun-Ju Song received his Ph.D. degree in Materials Science and Engineering, from University of Florida, USA in 2003. He joined Energy Technology/Systems Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, USA as a postdoctoral research associate in 2004, working mainly on ceramic materials for different electro-chemical applications. He has been a Professor at the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Chonnam National University (CNU), Republic of Korea since 2007. He also served as the visiting professor in Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Maryland, USA from 2011 to 2012, and Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, RPI, Troy, USA in 2015. He has published more than 150 papers in peer-reviewed journals and filed more than 30 patents. At CNU, his research interests include solid state electrochemistry, defect chemistry and transport properties, ceramic processing and functional ceramics.