The aim of this work is to investigate the response of nanostructured chemiresistive gas sensors with an active layers based on nanostructured metal oxides (nanoporous structures) to a significant group of chemical warfare agents (CWAs) - (G-series: sarin, cyclosarin, soman, choking agent: diphosgene) and their simulants - (diethyl-malonate, ethyl-chloroacetate and difenyl-phosphochloridate). The active layers of sensors (based on SnO₂ , ZnO, PdO) with thicknesses of 100 - 400 nm were prepared on sensor substrates by (i) sputtering of source metal and subsequent anodic oxidation, (ii) sputtering of source metal and subsequent thermal oxidation in oxygen atmosphere, (iii) thermal evaporation of source material metal and subsequent oxidation in oxygen atmosphere. Sensor platform consists of a planar sensor aluminium oxide substrate with interdigital platinum electrodes.

We present results of morphology investigation of nanostructured oxide films by AFM and SEM microscopy and structural analysis by XRD. Conventional dc-sensitivity of sensors S_dc was evaluated as a ratio of their resistance in air containing given concentration of analyte and that in "pure" air respectively. Detection was tested for concentrations of CWAs up to 50 ppm in air. SnO₂-based sensors feature a high sensitivity towards CWAs, where S_dc reaches a values of 3 - 10. On the other hand ZnO-based sensors exhibit significant selectivity to CWAs, whereas the responses to a common interferents are negligible. We show the connection between material morphology properties (porosity, crystalline size) and detection ability of CWAs.