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New Delhi (The Hawk): A novel nanostructure developed by scientists can detect oxides of nitrogen at very low concentrations at room temperature, addressing the urgent need for precise air quality monitoring systems in urban and industrial areas. Gas sensors play a pivotal role in modern technology, facilitating environmental monitoring, industrial safety, and healthcare diagnostics. The field of gas sensors is continuously evolving through innovative research in materials and technology, aiming to enhance key parameters such as sensitivity, selectivity, response and recovery times, stability, and operating temperature. Achieving a sensing device that shows superior performance across these parameters remains a primary objective of current research and development activities in sensor technology, although it poses significant technical challenges. The choice of materials for gas sensors is critical, exerting a profound influence on their operational performance. In the last few decades, chemiresistive gas sensors, which detect the gas molecules based on variation in materials resistance, using various types of binary metal oxide semiconductors have been extensively studied for detecting different gases. However, most of these sensors commonly lack selectivity for specific gases and face challenges like low sensitivity at ppb levels and the need for high-temperature operation, limiting their practical use. Addressing the limitations of existing sensing materials, researchers from Centre for Nano and Soft Matter Sciences (CeNS), an autonomous institute of DST have developed a gas sensor based on mixed spinel zinc ferrite (ZnFe2O4) nanostructures. This sensor detects nitrogen oxides (NOx) at ultra-low concentrations of parts-per-billion ( ...