Annealing Temperature Dependence of ZnO Nanostructures Grown by Facile Chemical Bath Deposition for EGFET pH Sensors

Zinc Oxide (ZnO) nanostructures were deposited using chemical bath deposition (CBD) technique in water bath at 95 °C for 4 h. Post-deposition heat treatment in air ambient at various temperature ranging from 200-600 °C for 30 min was applied in order to enhance the electrical properties of ZnO nanostructures as the sensing membrane of extended-gate field effect transistor (EGFET) pH sensor. The as-deposited sample was prepared for comparison. The samples were characterized in terms of physical and sensing properties. FESEM images showed that scattered ZnO nanorods were formed for the as-deposited sample, and the morphology of the ZnO nanorods changed to ZnO nanoflowers when the heat treatment was applied from 200-600 °C. For sensing properties, the samples heated at 300 °C showed the higher sensitivity which was 39.9 mV/pH with the linearity of 0.9792. The sensing properties was increased with the increasing annealing treatment temperature up to 300 °C before decreased drastically. (paper)