Oxygen-plasma-assisted Enhanced Acetone-sensing Properties of ZnO Nanofibers by Electrospinning.

In this paper, ZnO nanofibers were prepared by electrospinning. The as-prepared ZnO electrospun fibers were treated with plasma. The morphology, structure and element content of the ZnO nanofibers greatly changed after treatment with different plasmas. The test results indicated that the acetone-sensing performance was remarkably improved for oxygen-plasma-assisted ZnO nanofibers. Furthermore, the density function theory (DFT) calculation results revealed that the acetone adsorption energy of ZnO nanofibers treated with oxygen plasma was two times greater than that of untreated ZnO nanofibers, the electrons transferred between ZnO nanofibers and acetone molecules produced more remarkable change in electronic structure for the oxygen plasma treated ZnO nanofibers. Our work demonstrates that the oxygen plasma treatment method can help improve the acetone-sensing performance of ZnO nanofibers.