Preparation and characterization of conductive sensors based on potassium and silver hollandite

In this paper potassium-hollandite (K-hollandite) based materials are proposed as active layers for novel CO sensors to be used in air monitoring or combustion feedback control systems. K-hollandite is proposed because, thanks to its open framework structure, it could act as a molecular sieve. Moreover it can be easily doped, by ion exchange, with Ag, which is an excellent catalyst for CO oxidation. It will be shown that potassium hollandite can be used as CO conductometric sensor with a p-type behavior, and that the doped material shows, as expected, a better sensitivity to the target gas.