Room temperature ethanol gas-sensing properties based on Ag-doped MoSe nanoflowers: experimental and DFT investigation

• Published in: New journal of chemistry Vol. 45; no. 45; pp. 21423 - 21428
• Main Authors: Li, Tingting, Yu, Sujing, Li, Qi, Chi, Minghe, Li, Peng
• Format: Journal Article
• Published: 22.11.2021
• ISSN: 1144-0546; 1369-9261
• DOI: 10.1039/d1nj04318h

An Ag-doped MoSe 2 nanomaterial-based sensor was fabricated for ppb-level ethanol sensing at room temperature. The MoSe 2 and Ag-modified MoSe 2 nanoflowers were synthesized by a hydrothermal method, which exhibited high purity and crystallinity. Some characterization techniques such as SEM, TEM, XRD and XPS were employed to comprehensively analyze the micromorphology and microstructure of the Ag-MoSe 2 sample. The Ag-modified MoSe 2 nanomaterial was composed of nanoflowers assembled with many nanosheets. The gas-sensing results confirmed that compared with pristine MoSe 2 , the Ag-modified MoSe 2 based sensor exhibited a low detection limit (10 ppb) and good response/recovery characteristics towards ethanol at room temperature, which could be used for alcohol testing on drinkers. To further verify and explain the sensing mechanism, pristine and Ag-doped MoSe 2 adsorption configurations were simulated via the first-principles study based on density functional theory (DFT). Interestingly, the Ag-MoSe 2 system exhibited excellent ethanol sensing performance compared with the pristine MoSe 2 system, which was consistent with the experimental results. This work presents the combination of experimental and DFT simulation to substantiate that Ag-doped MoSe 2 nanoflowers are promising candidates for low-concentration ethanol detection at room temperature. Nanoflower-like Ag-doped MoSe 2 nanocomposites were prepared by a simple hydrothermal method for room-temperature ethanol detection with enhanced sensing performance.