Latest ArticlesDetection of trace-level hydrogen sulfide (H2S) gas is of great importance whether in industrial production or disease diagnosis. This research presents a novel H2S gas sensor based on integrated resonant dual-microcantilevers which can identify and detect trace-level H2S in real-time. The sensor consists of two integrated resonant microcantilever sensors with different functions. One cantilever sensor can identify H2S by outputting positive frequency shift signals, while the other cantilever sensor will detect H2S as a normally used cantilever sensor with negative frequency shifts. Combined the two cantilever sensors, the proposed gas sensor can distinguish H2S from a variety of common gases, and the detection limit to H2S of the sensor is as sensitive as below 1 ppb.
An optical fiber dual Fabry-Pérot interferometric carbon monoxide gas sensor based on PANI/Co3O4/GO (PCG) sensing membrane coated on the end face of the optical fiber is proposed and fabricated. One end face of photonic crystal fiber (PCF) without cut-off wavelength is fused with a single-mode fiber (SMF), and the other end face of the PCF is coated with PCG sensing membrane. The collapsed layer formed during the air hole fusion of PCF is used as the first reflector, the interface between PCF and sensing membrane is used as the second reflector, and the interface between the sensing membrane and the air is used as the third reflector, thus the dual Fabry-Pérot structure sensor is formed. The results show that the sensor has excellent sensitivity and selectivity to carbon monoxide. With the increasing concentration of carbon monoxide gas in the range of 0-60 ppm, the intensity of interference spectrum decreases. The sensitivity of the sensor is 0.3473 dB m/ppm, and its linearity is good. The response time and recovery time are 68 s and 106 s, respectively. The sensor has the advantages of the compact size, low cost, high sensitivity, strong selectivity and simple structure. It is suitable for the sensing detection of low concentration carbon monoxide gas.
Semiconducting metal oxides have been considered as effective approach for designing high-performance chemical sensing materials. In this paper, a kind of metal-organic frameworks ZIF-8 was used as sacrificed template to prepare porous ZnO hollow nanocubes for the application in gas sensing. It is found that changing calcination temperature and solvent can greatly influence the morphology of the material, which finally affects the gas sensing performance. Acetylene-sensing properties of the sensors were investigated in detail. It can be clearly seen that the material used methanol as reaction solvent with the decomposition at 350 ℃ for 2 h (ZnO-350-M) showed the optimal formaldehyde-sensing behaviors compared with other materials prepared in this experiment. The dynamic transients of the ZnO-350-M-based sensors demonstrated a high response value (about 10), fast response and recovery rate (4 s and 4 s, respectively) and good selectivity towards 100 ppm (part per million) formaldehyde as well as a low detectable limit (1 ppm). As exemplified for the sensing investigation towards formaldehyde, the porous ZnO hollow nanocubes showed a significantly improved chemical sensitivity due to the highly synergistic effects from the well exposed surfaces, defect states and the robust ZnO.
Ag- and Pt-doped WO3·0.33H2O nanorods with high response and selectivity to NH3 were synthesized from a tungsten-containing mineral of scheelite concentrate by a simple combined process, namely by a high pressure leaching method to obtain tungstate ions-containing leaching solution and followed by a hydrothermal method to prepare corresponding nanorods. The microstructure and NH3 sensing performance of the final products were investigated systematically. The microstructure characterization showed that the as-prepared WO3·0.33H2O nanorods had a hexagonal crystal structure, and Ag and Pt nanoparticles were uniformly distributed in the WO3·0.33H2O nanorods. Gas sensing measurements indicated that Ag and Pt nanoparticles not only could obviously enhance NH3 sensing properties in terms of response, selectivity as well as response/recovery time, but also could reduce the optimal operating temperature at which the highest response was achieved. The highest responses of 22.4 and 47.6 for Ag- and Pt-doped WO3·0.33H2O nanorods to 1000 ppm NH3 were obtained at 225 and 175 ℃, respectively, which were about four and eight folds higher than that of pure one at 250 ℃. The superior NH3 sensing properties are mainly ascribed to the catalytic activities of noble metals and the different work functions between noble metals and WO3·0.33H2O.
Graphene quantum dots (GQDs) have both the properties of graphene and semiconductor quantum dots, and exhibit stronger quantum confinement effect and boundary effect than graphene. In addition, the band gap of GQDs will transform to non-zero from 0 eV of graphene by surface functionalization, which can be dispersed in common solvents and compounded with solid materials. In this work, the SnO2 nanosheets were prepared by hydrothermal method. As the sensitizer, nitrogen-doped graphene quantum dots (N-GQDs) were prepared and composited with SnO2 nanosheets. Sensing performance of pristine SnO2 and N-GQDs/SnO2 were investigated with HCHO as the target gas. The response (Ra/Rg) of 0.1% N-GQDs/SnO2 was 256 for 100 ppm HCHO at 60 ℃, which was about 2.2 times higher than pristine SnO2 nanosheet. In addition, the material also had excellent selectivity and low operation temperature. The high sensitivity of N-GQDs/SnO2 was attributed to the increase of active sites on materials surface and the electrical regulation of N-GQDs. This research is helpful to develop new HCHO gas sensor and expand the application field of GQDs.
It is known that exposed surface determines materialos performance. WO3 is widely used in gas sensing and its working surface is proposed to control its sensitivity. However, the working surface, or most exposed surface with detailed surface structure remain unclear. In this paper, DFT calculation confirmed that oxygen vacancy O-terminated surface is the most exposed hexagonal WO3 (001) surface, judging from competitive adsorption of CO and O2, working surface determination for CO sensing and comparison of oxygen vacancy formation energies on different h-WO3 (001) surfaces. It is found that DFT can be a useful alternate for exposed surface determination. Our results provide new perspectives and performance explanations for material research.
Organic amines are important solvent and raw material in laboratory and industry, as well as releasing from cigarette smoke. It is significant to detect low-concentration amines for environment and public health. Here we reported that as-synthesized zinc oxide is an effective electrode material of electrochemical sensor for the detection of amines. The characterization results reveal that the ZnO morphologies experienced a change from hexagonal bowl-like microparticles, cones, prisms to nanoparticles by adjusting the reaction time, temperature, solvents and additives. Interestingly, ZnO material possessing hexagonal shapes and different sizes exhibits distinct electrochemical response in various amines solution, suggesting that there is a better dependent relationship between different morphological ZnO and amines detection. Particularly, regular hexagonal ZnO nanotablets exhibit a detectable electrochemical response and selectivity to ammonia, implying it can be serve as electrode material for highly effective detection of organic amines.
Using SnSO4, D-glucose, urea and water, hierarchical shell-core SnO2 microspheres were successfully synthesized via a simple hydrothermal method. The characterization results showed that the sizes of asprepared SnO2 microspheres were 0.6-1 μm, with shell thicknesses of 40-60 nm. The shell and large core of the SnO2 microspheres were all comprised of the same basic rice-like nanoparticles with diameters of 16-25 nm and lengths of 16-45 nm. Further investigaton showed that the glucose and urea served as structural guiding agents, and urea facilitated the formation of the hierarchical structure. The as-prepared SnO2 nanomaterials were used to fabricate a gas sensor with an electrode blade used for the gas sensitivity tests. The hierarchical shell-core SnO2 microspheres exhibited high sensitivity and selectivity toward ethanol, with a responsivity of 63.8 for 50 ppm ethanol at 250 ℃, while the response and recovery time were 7 s and 28 s, respectively. Moreover, the responsivity of the materials showed good linearity at ethanol concentrations from 500 ppb to 10 ppm. The simple synthetic method, environmentally-friendly raw materials, and excellent gas sensitivity demonstrate that the as-prepared SnO2 nanomaterial has great potential applications for the sensing of ethanol gas.
To develop a novel food preservation technology for efficiently enhance bactericidal activity in a long term, hollow mesoporous silica spheres (HMSS) with regular nanostructures were applied to encapsulate natural organic antimicrobial agents. The chemical structures, morphologies and thermal stabilities of linalool, HMSS and linalool-functionalized hollow mesoporous silica spheres (L-HMSS) nanoparticles were evaluated by polarimeter, field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM), transmission electron microscope (TEM), fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), thermal gravimetric analyzer (TGA), nitrogen adsorption-desorption, zeta potential and small angle X-ray diffraction (SXRD). The results show that the linalool was successfully introduced into the cavities of HMSS, and the inorganic host exhibited a high loading capacity of about 1500 mg/g. In addition, after 48 h of incubation, the minimum bactericidal concentrations (MBC) of L-HMSS against Escherichia coli (E. coli), Salmonella enterica (S. enterica) and Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus), Listeria monocytogenes (L. monocytogenes) were decreased to be 4 (< 5) mg/mL and 8 (< 10) mg/mL, respectively. These results revealed linaloolfunctionalized hollow mesoporous spheres could efficiently improve the bactericidal activities of the organic component. Furthermore, SEM images clearly showed that L-HMSS indeed had an extremely inhibitory effect against gram-negative (E. coli) and gram-positive (S. aureus) by breaking the structure of the cell membrane. This research is of great significance in the application of linalool in nano-delivery system as well as food industry.
By using ambient air as the oxidant and malic acid as the promoter, a practical method for the preparation of 2-aminobenzothiazoles through visible-light-initiated cascade reaction of aromatic amines and KSCN in eco-friendly bis(methoxypropy)ether under metal-, hazardous additive-, photocatalyst-free conditions was established.
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