ZnO-Decorated In/Ga Oxide Nanotubes Derived from Bimetallic In/Ga MOFs for Fast Acetone Detection with High Sensitivity and Selectivity.

The development of acetone gas sensors is desirable but challenging for both air quality monitoring and medical diagnosis. Herein, starting from bimetallic In/Ga metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) (MIL-68 (In/Ga)), a facile strategy is proposed to couple with zinc ions to design In/Ga oxide (IGO)@ZnO core-shell nanotubes for efficient acetone detection. In such a heterostructure, tiny ZnO nanoparticles are closely decorated on IGO nanotubes, which is beneficial to enlarge the specific surface area and create rich oxygen vacancies and heterojunction interfaces. Benefiting from the structural merits and synergetic effects, the IGO@ZnO-based gas sensor exhibits a low detection limitation (200 ppb), a high response, good linearity relationship between the sensing responses and wide testing acetone concentrations, and fast response and recovery time (6.8/6.1 s) with good selectivity and stability. These sensing performances strongly indicate the practical application to quantitatively detect acetone.