A GdAlO3 Perovskite Oxide Electrolyte-Based NOx Solid-State Sensor

NOx is a notorious emission from motor vehicles and chemical factories as the precursor of acid rain and photochemical smog. Although zirconia-based NOx sensors have been developed and showed high sensitivity and selectivity at a high temperature of above 800 °C, they fail to show good performance, and even don't work at the typical work temperature window of the automotive engine (<500 °C). It still is a formidable challenge for development of mild-temperature NOx detector or sensor. Herein, a novel amperometric solid-state NOx sensor was developed using perovskite-type oxide Gd1-xCaxAlO3-δ(GCA) as the electrolyte and NiO as the sensing electrode. NOx sensing properties of the device were investigated at the temperature region of 400-500 °C. The response current value at -300 mV was almost linearly proportional to the NOx concentration between 300 and 500 ppm at 500 °C. At such a temperature, the optimal sensor gave the highest NO2 sensitivity of 20.15 nA/ppm, and the maximum response current value reached 5.57 μA. Furthermore, a 90% response and 90% recover time to 500 ppm NO2 were about 119 and 92 s, respectively. The excellent selectivity and stability towards NOx sensing showed the potential application of the sensor in motor vehicles.