Progress of Sensors Based on Hollow Metal Sulfides Nanoparticles

Abstract

Gas sensors are widely used, playing important role in different sectors of daily life ranging from safety and security, environmental monitoring, food safety & control to medical diagnosis. The development of physical, chemical and biological detection systems, triggered the search for more sensitive, reliable, simple and low-cost gas sensors. With this perspective, metal oxides as sensing materials have been widely used in gas sensors due to the high sensitivity, fast response and recovery times. However, their low selectivity, lack of stability, and the high operational temperatures have limited their use as sensing material for applications in gas sensors. Recently, as a promising alternative to metal oxide, metal sulfides have attracted attention as sensing materials because, the activation of intrinsic surface reactions might occur at lower working temperatures, what has the potential to lead to better selectivity and stability during operation. Besides the electronic properties of the gas sensing nanomaterials, their morphology plays an important role for improving their sensing properties. In this context, hollow nanostructures with unique physicochemical property, surface active sites and abundant inner spaces have the potential to improve the gas detection. Here, recent research progress in hollow metal sulfides nanostructures and applications in gas sensors are summarized. The effect of structural and compositional engineering in the sensing properties of hollow metal sulfides is discussed.