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High sensitivity low-temperature ethanol and acetone gas sensors based on silver/titanium oxide decorated laser-induced graphene

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Abstract

The increasing environmental and safety concerns necessitate the development of advanced gas sensors capable of effectively identifying volatile and hazardous organic substances. Different sensors have been utilized to detect volatile organic compounds (VOCs). In this study, we report on the successful design of chemiresistive sensors based on porous laser-induced graphene (LIG) to effectively detect VOCs, including acetone and ethanol. Flexible 3D porous LIG has been produced using femtosecond laser texturing of polyimide tape. The 3D porous LIG primarily consists of multilayer graphene sheets comprising two or more monolayers. To enhance the sensors’ capabilities, we created LIG-based heterojunction devices by decorating the LIG with Ag and TiOx (x ≤ 2) nanoparticles (NPs) using femtosecond pulsed laser deposition. Our experiments show that the sensitivity of LIG sensors increases when they are decorated with Ag and TiOx NPs. Among these, the LIG devices decorated with Ag NPs show the highest sensitivity and response compared to others. The sensor is reversibly responsive at ambient temperature towards the target VOCs in concentrations below 3000 ppm. Additionally, we introduce a mechanism to explain our findings. This mechanism relies on the distinction in the work function and energy level alignment linked to the interactions between adsorbates and adsorbents. The improved sensitivity of the Ag NPs-decorated porous LIG sensor is attributed to the favourable work function of Ag and the abundant availability of adsorption sites.

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Data is available upon request from the corresponding authors.

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge support from the American University of Sharjah through the FRG23-C-S56 Grant.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, American University of Sharjah, P.O. Box 26666, Sharjah, UAE

    Aya Abu Baker, Ganjaboy Boltaev, Asghar Ali & Ali S. Alnaser

  2. Materials Science and Engineering, College of Arts and Sciences, American University of Sharjah, P.O. Box 26666, Sharjah, UAE

    Ganjaboy Boltaev, Asghar Ali & Ali S. Alnaser

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  1. Aya Abu Baker
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Contributions

ASA and GB conceived the experiment. GB, AAB, and AA performed the experiment and analysed the data. ASA supervised the project. All authors contributed to the writing and editing of the manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Ganjaboy Boltaev or Ali S. Alnaser.

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The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

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Baker, A.A., Boltaev, G., Ali, A. et al. High sensitivity low-temperature ethanol and acetone gas sensors based on silver/titanium oxide decorated laser-induced graphene. J Mater Sci 59, 4198–4208 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-024-09503-w

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