Fundamental and practical aspects in the design of nanoscaled SnO2 gas sensors: a status report

Gas sensors based on semiconducting materials have become of great interest to both sensor users and researchers. In this context, a huge number of publications have appeared in the literature which deal with metal oxide gas sensors, in general, and with the prototype material SnO₂, in particular. The amount of data published grows continuously and has led to a situation in which even experts in this field tend to lose an overview. The present review describes the reasons for this complexity and outlines unifying concepts to understand the huge amount of published, mostly empirical data. This leads to a comprehension of gas-sensing phenomena in both the application and research domains. Received: 7 December 1998 / Revised: 6 May 1999 / Accepted: 19 May 1999