Dear Colleagues,

Solid state gas sensors based on semiconducting metal oxides represent the most widely studied and employed class of devices for the detection of several reducing and oxidising species. Particularly, the use of nanocrystalline materials brings advantages in terms of surface to volume ratio, and as a result increases the gas response enormously. However, the need of high working temperatures and the lack of selectivity are still among the main problems of such kind of devices.
On the other side, organic molecules offer the possibility of being chemically designed and tailored to display specific interactions with different gases. Furthermore, they exhibit a good response even at low operation temperatures, if compared with metal oxides. Unfortunately, their poor  properties in terms of charge carrier transport is a difficult bottleneck which hinders their use as active materials in gas sensing applications. Therefore, they still show limitations in solid state performance, response stability and duration.
Researchers are being invited to submit articles for this special issue, showing new concepts and architectures of gas sensors exploiting hybrid organic-inorganic materials that join the metal oxide response and stability over time with the selectivity of organic materials.
Combinations of metal oxide nanowires or nanoparticles on one side, and small conjugated molecules, polymers or carbon nanotubes on the other side, are only two examples of the many possibilities which can be investigated towards this novel concept of organic-inorganic hybrid device.

Dr. Matteo Tonezzer
Guest Editor

• gas sensors
• gas detection
• gas analysis
• hybrid sensors
• metal oxide
• organic material
• thin films
• nanostructured materials
• nanowires; polymers
• carbon nanotubes