Clad-modified fiber optic sensor utilizing CdS nanoflower as cladding for the detection of ethanol

Nowadays, sensing and detection of ethanol is paramount one for numerous applications including production of ethanol, fuel processing, chemical processing in industry, traffic management, food package testing for safety and medical applications. On the other hand, the rapid growth of nanotechnology paves the way to develop highly sensitive, portable and low-cost sensors with less power consumption. In line with this fact, a cladding modified fiber optic ethanol sensor using CdS nanoflower has been reported in the present study. CdS nanoflower was prepared by one step hydrothermal synthesis and subjected for various characterization techniques to investigate the material properties. The sensor probe was developed viz cladding modification technology followed by dip coating of CdS nanoflower over an unclad section of an optical fiber. The potency of CdS nanoflower has been probed for 0–300 ppm of acetone, ethanol, methanol and isopropanol at ambient environment. The sensing results demonstrates that the sensor coated with CdS nanoflower manifested better sensing performances towards ethanol (~ 4.6% at 300 ppm) with response/recovery of 90 s and 100 s than other gases. The unique sensing feature complied that CdS nanoflower is desirable candidate in effective quantification of ethanol.