Sunflower-Shaped Zinc Oxide Architectures Decorated with Cerium Oxide Nanoparticles for the Stable Detection of
Yi Zhang1, Xinhua Zhao1, Xiaxia Xing1
1Tianjin Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Sensor and Sensing Network Technology, and College of Electronic Information and Optical Engineering, Nankai University, Tianjin 300350, P. R. China.
Abstract:
The newly emerged gas sensing detection of benzaldehyde biomarkers is deemed as a noninvasive way to indirectly diagnose lung canceration, in which the benzaldehyde sensing is simultaneously endowed with high stability, along with humidity tolerance and ppb-concentration detection limit, but requires further developing. Here, sunflower-shaped zinc oxide architectures decorated with cerium oxide nanoparticles (ZnO ACHs/CeO2 NPs) have been synthesized via a hydrothermal process followed by annealing for stable and ppb-concentration benzaldehyde sensing. As-prepared ZnO ACHs/CeO2 NPs are observed with sunflower-shaped architectures decorated with CeO2 NPs. Beneficially, ZnO ACHs/CeO2 NPs exhibit a 50 ppb detection limit, 71 days stability, and 90% RH humidity tolerance at 240 °C. Such an excellent benzaldehyde sensing performance might be attributed to the accelerated electron transfers by forming heterojunctions and enriched adsorption sites over sunflower-shaped architectures. Remarkably, the classification algorithm combined with principal component analysis was conducted to identify the benzaldehyde from other interfering gases. Practically, ZnO ACHs/CeO2 NPs are integrated into the benzaldehyde sensing device, which has potential in the future early diagnosis of lung canceration.
