Qualitative Detection Toward Military and Improvised Explosive Vapors by a Facile TiO2 Nanosheet-Based Chemiresistive Sensor Array

Yushu Li; Wenyi Zhou; Baiyi Zu; Xincun Dou

doi:10.3389/fchem.2020.00029

Qualitative Detection Toward Military and Improvised Explosive Vapors by a Facile TiO₂ Nanosheet-Based Chemiresistive Sensor Array

Front Chem. 2020 Jan 31:8:29. doi: 10.3389/fchem.2020.00029. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Yushu Li^{1

2}, Wenyi Zhou^{1

2

3}, Baiyi Zu^{1

2}, Xincun Dou^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Xinjiang Key Laboratory of Explosives Safety Science, Xinjiang Technical Institute of Physics & Chemistry, Urumqi, China.
² Key Laboratory of Functional Materials and Devices for Special Environments, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Urumqi, China.
³ Center of Materials Science and Optoelectronics Engineering, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.

Abstract

A facile TiO₂ nanosheets-based chemiresistive gas sensor array was prepared to identify 11 kinds of military and improvised explosive vapors at room temperature. The morphology of TiO₂ nanosheets was well-controlled by adjusting the concentration of HF applied during the preparation. Owing to the morphology difference, the TiO₂ nanosheet-based sensors show different response values toward 11 kinds of explosives, which is the basis of the successful discriminative identification. This method owes lots of advantages over other detection techniques, such as the facile preparation procedure, high response value (115.6% for TNT and 830% for PNT) at room temperature, rapid identifying properties (within 30 s for 9 explosives), simple operation, high anti-interference property, and low probability of misinforming, and consequently has a huge potential application in the qualitative detection of explosives.

Keywords: TiO2; chemiresistive sensor array; improvised explosives; military explosives; vapor detection.