Mof-Derived Al3+-Doped Co3o4 Nanocomposites for Highly N-Butanol Gas Sensing Performance at Low Operating Temperature

Abstract

High-performance gas sensors based on metal oxides to VOCs at a low operating temperature are received too much attractive due to their practical utility and energy saving. In this work, Al/Co MOF was first synthesized by hydrothermal method. After calcination, Al3+-doped Co3O4 (Al-Co3O4) nanocomposites with different amounts of Al3+ are derived. When fabricated onto the gas sensor, the nanocomposites of Al-Co3O4 have excellent gas-sensing properties to n-butanol at the low working temperature (100 °C). The response of 10% Al-Co3O4 to 20 ppm n-butanol reaches 116.7, around 5.5 times compared with that of pristine Co3O4. The gas sensor based on 10% Al-Co3O4 also has good repeatability, selectivity, and stability. It indicated that Al3+ doping makes Al-Co3O4 possess more intact sphere morphology. Doping could dramatically enhance the gas-sensing performance of Al-Co3O4 because of the increased oxygen vacancies and narrower band gap energy. These findings inspire the construction of new p-type metal oxide semiconductor gas sensors with a low operating temperature.

Keywords: Al-Co3O4, Gas sensors, metal-organic frameworks, N-butanol, Low Operating Temperature