scholarly journals Cr-Doped Urchin-Like WO3 Hollow Spheres: The Cooperative Modulation of Crystal Growth and Energy-Band Structure for High-Sensitive Acetone Detection

Sensors ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (12) ◽  
pp. 3473 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiongling Ding ◽  
Yanrong Wang ◽  
Pengqian Guo ◽  
Jianjun Li ◽  
Chen Chen ◽  
...  

Acetone is a biomarker in the exhaled breath of diabetic patients; sensitive and selective detection of acetone in human exhaled breath plays an important role in noninvasive diagnosis. Tungsten oxide (especially for γ-WO3) is a promising material for the detection of breath acetone. It is generally believed that the stable metastable phase of WO3 (ε-WO3) is the main reason for the improved response to acetone detection. In this work, pure and Cr-doped urchin-like WO3 hollow spheres were synthesized by a facile hydrothermal approach. Analyses of the resulting materials via X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and Raman confirmed that they are mainly composed by γ-WO3. The gas sensing performances of pure and Cr-doped WO3 to acetone were systematically tested. Results show that the sensor based on pure WO3 annealed at 450 °C has a high response of 20.32 toward 100 ppm acetone at a working temperature of 250 °C. After doped with Cr, the response was increased 3.5 times higher than the pure WO3 sensor. The pure and Cr-doped WO3 sensors both exhibit a tiny response to other gases, low detection limits (ppb-level) and an excellent repeatability. The improvement of gas sensing properties could be attributed to an optimized morphology of Cr-doped WO3 by regulating the crystal growth and reducing the assembled nanowires’ diameter. The increasing number of oxygen vacancy and the introduction of impurity energy level with trap effect after Cr doping would lead to the wider depletion layer as well as a better gas sensing performance. This work will contribute to the development of new WO3 acetone sensors with a novel morphology and will explain the increased response after Cr doping from a new perspective.

Research ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huimin Gong ◽  
Changhui Zhao ◽  
Gaoqiang Niu ◽  
Wei Zhang ◽  
Fei Wang

Exhaled acetone is one of the representative biomarkers for the noninvasive diagnosis of type-1 diabetes. In this work, we have applied a facile two-step chemical bath deposition method for acetone sensors based on α-Fe2O3/SnO2 hybrid nanoarrays (HNAs), where one-dimensional (1D) FeOOH nanorods are in situ grown on the prefabricated 2D SnO2 nanosheets for on-chip construction of 1D/2D HNAs. After annealing in air, ultrafine α-Fe2O3 nanorods are homogenously distributed on the surface of SnO2 nanosheet arrays (NSAs). Gas sensing results show that the α-Fe2O3/SnO2 HNAs exhibit a greatly enhanced response to acetone (3.25 at 0.4 ppm) at a sub-ppm level compared with those based on pure SnO2 NSAs (1.16 at 0.4 ppm) and pure α-Fe2O3 nanorods (1.03 at 0.4 ppm), at an operating temperature of 340°C. The enhanced acetone sensing performance may be attributed to the formation of α-Fe2O3–SnO2 n-n heterostructure with 1D/2D hybrid architectures. Moreover, the α-Fe2O3/SnO2 HNAs also possess good reproducibility and selectivity toward acetone vapor, suggesting its potential application in breath acetone analysis.


Coatings ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1030
Author(s):  
Arkadiusz Zarzycki ◽  
Katarzyna Dyndał ◽  
Maciej Sitarz ◽  
Jie Xu ◽  
Feng Gao ◽  
...  

In this paper, we describe a deposition method and investigation of the physical properties of WO3 films. We investigated tungsten oxide due to its potential application as a gas sensor. Thin films of the WO3 were deposited on glass, silicon, and alumina substrates by magnetron GLAD sputtering. The crystallinity of films was determined by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and the thickness by X-Ray Reflectivity (XRR) and spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE). Surface morphology, which is important for gas sensitivity, was measured by atomic force microscopy (AFM). We studied the gas-sensing characteristics under exposure to acetone in the 0.1–1.25 ppm range which covers the levels of exhaled breath acetone. We show that WO3 sensors have different sensitivity for different sputter angle. Furthermore, we demonstrate the influence of temperature during gas content measurement.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 478
Author(s):  
Yudai Kudo ◽  
Saiko Kino ◽  
Yuji Matsuura

Human breath is a biomarker of body fat metabolism and can be used to diagnose various diseases, such as diabetes. As such, in this paper, a vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) spectroscopy system is proposed to measure the acetone in exhaled human breath. A strong absorption acetone peak at 195 nm is detected using a simple system consisting of a deuterium lamp source, a hollow-core fiber gas cell, and a fiber-coupled compact spectrometer corresponding to the VUV region. The hollow-core fiber functions both as a long-path and an extremely small-volume gas cell; it enables us to sensitively measure the trace components of exhaled breath. For breath analysis, we apply multiple regression analysis using the absorption spectra of oxygen, water, and acetone standard gas as explanatory variables to quantitate the concentration of acetone in breath. Based on human breath, we apply the standard addition method to obtain the measurement accuracy. The results suggest that the standard deviation is 0.074 ppm for healthy human breath with an acetone concentration of around 0.8 ppm and a precision of 0.026 ppm. We also monitor body fat burn based on breath acetone and confirm that breath acetone increases after exercise because it is a volatile byproduct of lipolysis.


Nanomaterials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (7) ◽  
pp. 1738
Author(s):  
Saeid Vafaei ◽  
Alexander Wolosz ◽  
Catlin Ethridge ◽  
Udo Schnupf ◽  
Nagisa Hattori ◽  
...  

SnO2 nanoparticles are regarded as attractive, functional materials because of their versatile applications. SnO2 nanoaggregates with single-nanometer-scale lumpy surfaces provide opportunities to enhance hetero-material interfacial areas, leading to the performance improvement of materials and devices. For the first time, we demonstrate that SnO2 nanoaggregates with oxygen vacancies can be produced by a simple, low-temperature sol-gel approach combined with freeze-drying. We characterize the initiation of the low-temperature crystal growth of the obtained SnO2 nanoaggregates using high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM). The results indicate that Sn (II) hydroxide precursors are converted into submicrometer-scale nanoaggregates consisting of uniform SnO2 spherical nanocrystals (2~5 nm in size). As the sol-gel reaction time increases, further crystallization is observed through the neighboring particles in a confined part of the aggregates, while the specific surface areas of the SnO2 samples increase concomitantly. In addition, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurements suggest that Sn (II) ions exist in the SnO2 samples when the reactions are stopped after a short time or when a relatively high concentration of Sn (II) is involved in the corresponding sol-gel reactions. Understanding this low-temperature growth of 3D SnO2 will provide new avenues for developing and producing high-performance, photofunctional nanomaterials via a cost-effective and scalable method.


2010 ◽  
Vol 5 (9) ◽  
pp. 1437-1441 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gang Yang ◽  
Peng Hu ◽  
Yuebin Cao ◽  
Fangli Yuan ◽  
Ruifen Xu

2003 ◽  
Vol 18 (10) ◽  
pp. 2359-2363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongzhou Gu ◽  
Yunle Gu ◽  
Zhefeng Li ◽  
Yongcheng Ying ◽  
Yitai Qian

Nanoscale hollow spheres of amorphous phosphorus nitride (P3N5) were synthesized by reacting PCl3 with NaN3 at 150–250 °C. Transmission electron microscope images show that the hollow spheres have a diameter of 150–350 nm, and the thickness of the shell is 20 nm. A very small amount of curly films were also found in the sample prepared at 150 °C. The infrared spectrum indicates a high degree of purity. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy indicates the presence of P and N, with a molar ratio of 1:1.62 for P:N. Ultraviolet-visible absorption spectroscopy shows an absorption band at 265–315 nm. Under photoluminescent excitation at 230 nm, the P3N5 emits ultraviolet light at 305 nm. With a band gap of 4.28 eV, the products may be a wide gap semiconductor. A possible mechanism and the influence of temperature on the formation of the hollow spheres are also discussed.


2021 ◽  
pp. 2151043
Author(s):  
Zijing Wang ◽  
Fen Wang ◽  
Angga Hermawan ◽  
Jianfeng Zhu ◽  
Shu Yin

Porous nitrogen-doped Ti3C2T[Formula: see text] MXene (N-TCT) with a three-dimensional network structure is synthesized via a simple sacrifice template method and then utilized as an acetone gas sensor. By introducing nitrogen atoms as heteroatoms into Ti3C2T[Formula: see text] nanosheets, some defects generate around the doped nitrogen atoms, which can greatly improve the surface hydrophilicity and adsorption capacity of Ti3C2T[Formula: see text] Mxene nanosheets. It resulted in the enhanced gas sensitivity, achieving a response value of about 36 ([Formula: see text]/[Formula: see text] × 100%) and excellent recovery time (9s) at 150[Formula: see text]C. Compared with the pure Ti3C2T[Formula: see text]-based gas sensor (381/92s), the response and recovery time are both obviously improved, and the response value increased by 3.5 times. The gas-sensing mechanism of the porous N-TCT is also discussed in detail. Based on the excellent gas sensitivity of porous N-TCT for highly responsive acetone detection at high temperatures, the strategy of nitrogen-doped two-dimensional nanomaterials can be extended to other nanomaterials to realize their potential applications.


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