Unveiling the impact of 2-D materials on the gas sensing properties of metal oxides: A review

Abstract

The integration of 2D materials with metal oxides has emerged as a promising strategy to enhance gas sensing properties, offering significant improvements in sensitivity, selectivity, and response times. This review thus critically discusses the improvements on the gas sensor technologies enabled by integration of 2D materials like MoS₂, g-C₃N₄, Mxene, rGO, CNT, PANI and Black Phosphorus into different metal oxide materials. Several synthesis techniques such as sol-gel process, hydrothermal process, chemical vapour deposition, sputtering and electrospinning have been presented with emphasis on their effects sensor characteristics. Creating heterojunctions and utilizing properties of 2D materials in the structure of the composite sensors enables them to display a high sensitivity to gas molecules, including their low concentrations and ambient temperature. These hybrid nanostructures offer improved surface area, active sites, and electronic properties, enabling the detection of low gas concentrations at room temperature. This paper offers a background for the current state, emerging prospects, and obstacles, as well as future advances regarding hybrid nanostructures, demonstrating the great opportunity they offer in the field of gas sensors for environmental and health concerns, and safety and industrial applications. The findings reveal their superior performance over conventional sensors, addressing key challenges in the field.