Controllable Synthesis of Y₂O₃ Microstructures for Application in Cataluminescence Gas Sensing

Abstract

Y(2)O(3) dumbbells, microspheres, and nanosheets were synthesized by a facile hydrothermal procedure followed by calcination. Electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction, and N(2) adsorption measurements were used to characterize the yttrium oxide microstructures. On the basis of a time-dependent study of nanostructure evolution and the effect of other processing parameters, a kinetic "homogeneous nucleation-self assembly-anisotropic growth" mechanism is proposed to explain the growth of these microstructures under hydrothermal conditions. The sensitivity of as-prepared Y(2)O(3) structures to a series of gaseous chemicals was examined by using a homemade cataluminescence sensing system. The designed cataluminescence sensor based on the yttrium oxide dumbbells shows good sensing performance for 16 common volatile organic compounds.

Advances in nanomaterial-assisted cataluminescence and its sensing applications

“…Our group has also explored a number of new catalytic sensing materials [38,40,42,45,[62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76]. For example, we observed strong CTL emissions on nanosized ZnO [62], La 2 O 3 [67], CeO 2 [73], V 2 O 5 [74], and designed corresponding sensors for selective measurement of vapors (e.g., ethanol, acetone, carbon disulfide, and terbutyl mercaptan, respectively).…”

“…(2) for a given analyte, a variety of catalysts can be used to construct the corresponding sensor; and, conversely, the same nanomaterial response to various gas analytes at different catalytic conditions {e.g., nanosized TiO 2 , SrCO 3 , ZrO 2 , Ce 1-x Zr x O 2 , γ-AlOOH, ZnO, YVO 4 :Eu 3+ have all been used as sensing materials for ethanol sensors, and α-Fe 2 O 3 and SnO 2 NTs have both been used in H 2 S sensors [33,40,41,46,47,49,62,78,79]; while nanosized Y 2 O 3 has been used as CTL sensing material in detection of ethyl acetate, benzene, benzaldehyde, trimethylamine and other gases or vapors [50,[56][57][58]68]; and, (3) the range of gas analytes has been broadened to involve, e.g., volatile alcohols, ketones, aldehydes, alkanes, ethers, esters, chloromethanes, and toxic inorganic gases.…”

Recent Advances in Graphitic Carbon Nitride-Based Chemiluminescence, Cataluminescence and Electrochemiluminescence

“…Zhang and coworkers proposed nanosized TiO 2 as the sensing material to detect ethanol and acetone [82], which was considered as a pioneering work for the combination of nanomaterials and CTL-based chemosensors. Since then, CTL-based chemosensors with the adoption of various nanocatalysts have been intensively researched by many academic groups such as Zhang's [83][84][85][86] [96][97][98][99][100][101] and so on. Due to the high chemical stability, specific structure and composition as well as the catalytic, electronic and optical properties, g-C 3 N 4 can provide greater versatility in carrying out gas adsorption, selective catalytic and sensing processes; therefore, g-C 3 N 4 -based materials may provide new opportunities to develop new CTL-sensing materials.…”

Exploration of nano-surface chemistry for spectral analysis

“…Currently, different response principles have been used in the design of the sensor arrays, such as optical sensor array, electrochemical sensor array, and sonic sensor array. Because the optical [76] sensor array can provide a larger amount of information to identify and classify the samples, such as luminescence, intensity, wavelength and lifetime, the development of optical sensor arrays has been achieved rapidly. Suslick's group [78][79][80] has conducted a lot of excellent work to identify complex gas mixture by optical sensor array.…”