Hydrothermal Synthesis of WO₃·0.33H₂O Nanorod Bundles as a Highly Sensitive Cyclohexene Sensor

Xiaofei Liu; Xintai Su; Chao Yang; Kongjun Ma

doi:10.3390/s19051257

Hydrothermal Synthesis of WO₃·0.33H₂O Nanorod Bundles as a Highly Sensitive Cyclohexene Sensor

Sensors (Basel). 2019 Mar 12;19(5):1257. doi: 10.3390/s19051257.

Authors

Xiaofei Liu¹, Xintai Su², Chao Yang³, Kongjun Ma⁴

Affiliations

¹ Ministry Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Fine Chemicals, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xinjiang University, Urumqi 830046, China. lxf40414@163.com.
² The Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Ecosystem Restoration in Industry Clusters (Ministry of Education), School of Environment and Energy, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China. suxintai827@163.com.
³ Ministry Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Fine Chemicals, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xinjiang University, Urumqi 830046, China. jarryyang1924@163.com.
⁴ Ministry Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Fine Chemicals, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xinjiang University, Urumqi 830046, China. kjma@xju.edu.cn.

Abstract

In this paper, WO₃·0.33H₂O nanorods were prepared through a simple hydrothermal method using p-aminobenzoic acid (PABA) as an auxiliary reagent. X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images showed that the products with PABA addition were orthorhombic WO₃·0.33H₂O, which were mainly composed of nanorods with different crystal planes. The sensing performance of WO₃·0.33H₂O nanorod bundles prepared by the addition of PABA (100 ppm cyclohexene, Ra/Rg = 50.6) was found to be better than the WO₃ synthesized without PABA (100 ppm cyclohexene, Ra/Rg = 1.3) for the detection of cyclohexene. The new synthesis route and sensing characteristics of as-synthesized WO₃·0.33H₂O nanorods revealed a promising candidate for the preparation of the cost-effective gas sensors.

Keywords: WO3·0.33H2O; cyclohexene; gas sensing; hydrothermal; nanorod bundles; p-aminobenzoic acid.