Cerium-Doped Copper(II) Oxide Hollow Nanostructures as Efficient and Tunable Sensors for Volatile Organic Compounds

Tuning sensing capabilities of simple to complex oxides for achieving enhanced sensitivity and selectivity toward the detection of toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is extremely important and remains a challenge. In the present work, we report the synthesis of pristine and Ce-doped CuO hollow nanostructures, which have much higher VOC sensing and response characteristics than their solid analogues. Undoped CuO hollow nanostructures exhibit high response for sensing of acetone as compared to commercial CuO nanoparticles. As a result of doping with cerium, the material starts showing selectivity. CuO hollow structures doped with 5 at. % of Ce return highest response toward methanol sensing, whereas increasing the Ce doping concentration to 10%, the material shows high response for both-acetone and methanol. The observed tunability in selectivity is directly linked to the varying concentration of the oxygen defects on the surface of the nanostructures. The work also shows that the use of hollow nanostructures could be the way forward for obtaining high-performance sensors even by using conventional and simple metal or semiconductor oxides.