Surmounting the inhomogeniety issue of gas sensors and realizing their reproducible ppb‐level gas sensing are highly desirable for widespread deployments of sensors to build networks in applications of industrial safety and indoor/outdoor air quality monitoring. Herein, a strategy is proposed to substantially improve the surface homogeneity of sensing materials and gas sensing performance via chip‐level pyrolysis of as‐grown ZIF‐L (ZIF stands for zeolitic imidazolate framework) films to porous and hierarchical zinc oxide (ZnO) nanosheets. A novel approach to generate adjustable oxygen vacancies is demonstrated, through which the electronic structure of sensing materials can be fine‐tuned. Their presence is thoroughly verified by various techniques. The sensing results demonstrate that the resultant oxygen vacancy‐abundant ZnO nanosheets exhibit significantly enhanced sensitivity and shortened response time toward ppb‐level carbon monoxide (CO) and volatile organic compounds encompassing 1,3‐butadiene, toluene, and tetrachloroethylene, which can be ascribed to several reasons including unpaired electrons, consequent bandgap narrowing, increased specific surface area, and hierarchical micro–mesoporous structures. This facile approach sheds light on the rational design of sensing materials via defect engineering, and can facilitate the mass production, commercialization, and large‐scale deployments of sensors with controllable morphology and superior sensing performance targeted for ultratrace gas detection.
Gas sensing technologies for smart cities require miniaturization, cost‐effectiveness, low power consumption, and outstanding sensitivity and selectivity. On‐chip, tailorable capacitive sensors integrated with metal–organic framework (MOF) films are presented, in which abundant coordinatively unsaturated metal sites are available for gas detection. The in situ growth of homogeneous Mg‐MOF‐74 films is realized with an appropriate metal‐to‐ligand ratio. The resultant sensors exhibit selective detection for benzene vapor and carbon dioxide (CO2) at room temperature. Postsynthetic modification of Mg‐MOF‐74 films with ethylenediamine decreases sensitivity toward benzene but increases selectivity to CO2. The reduced porosity and blocked open metal sites caused by amine coordination account for a deterioration in the sensing performance for benzene (by ca. 60 %). The enhanced sensitivity for CO2 (by ca. 25 %) stems from a tailored amine–CO2 interaction. This study demonstrates the feasibility of tuning gas sensing properties by adjusting MOF–analyte interactions, thereby offering new perspectives for the development of MOF‐based sensors.
We report the intergrowth of ZIF-8 crystals on ultrathin graphene oxide (GO) membranes, which helps to reduce the non-selective pores of pristine GO membranes leading to gas selectivities as high as 406, 155, and 335 for H2/CO2, H2/N2, and H2/CH4 mixtures, respectively.
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