Impact of reducing agents on the ammonia sensing performance of silver decorated reduced graphene oxide: Experiment and first principles calculations

Abstract We investigate economic room temperature sensors for toxic ammonia molecules (NH3) based on reduced graphene oxide decorated with silver nanoparticles (Ag:rGO) to provide a systematic understanding of the role played by the employed reducing agent. To this aim, we perform a comparative study of the sensing performance for a set of reducing agents, using a combination of experimental and theoretical methods. Specifically, Ag:rGO prepared with the reducing agents glucose, vitamin C, and sodium borohydride (NaBH4) is studied experimentally by the chemi-resistive method and is modelled theoretically by first-principles calculations. NaBH4 turns out to be an effective reducing agent due to favourable charge transfer kinetics by band bending.