Humidity and temperature sensing properties of copper oxide–Si-adhesive nanocomposite

Smart and professional humidity and temperature sensors have been fabricated by utilizing copper oxide–Si-adhesive composite and pure copper oxide nanosheets. Copper oxide nanosheets are synthesized by low temperature stirring method and characterized by field emission scanning electron microscopy, which reveals that synthesized product is composed of randomly oriented nanosheets, which are grown in high density with an average thickness of~80±10 nm. X-ray diffraction confirms that the grown nanosheets consist of well crystalline monoclinic CuO. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy also confirm that the synthesized nanomaterial is pure CuO without any impurity. The fabricated sensors exhibit good temperature sensitivity of −4.0%/°C and −5.2%/°C and humidity sensitivity of −2.9%/%RH and −4.88%/%RH, respectively for copper oxide–Si-adhesive composite and pure copper oxide nanosheets. The average initial resistance of the sensors is equal to 250 MΩ and 55 MΩ for the composite and pure copper oxide based sensors, respectively.