Carbon functionalized mesoporous silica-based gas sensors for indoor volatile organic compounds

Indoor organic gaseous pollution is a global health problem, which seriously threats the health and life of human all over the world. Hence, it is important to fabricate new sensing materials with high sensitivity and efficiency for indoor volatile organic compounds. In this study, a series of ordered mesoporous silica-based nanocomposites with uniform carbon coatings on the internal surface of silica mesopore channels were synthesized through a simple template-carbonization strategy. The obtained mesoporous silica-carbon nanocomposites not only possess ordered mesostructures, high surface areas (up to ~759 m² g^-1), large and tunable pore sizes (2.6-10.2 nm), but also have the improved hydrophobicity and anti-interference capability to environmental humidity. The sensing performances of the mesoporous silica-carbon nanocomposites to volatile organic compounds, such as ethylbenzene, methylbenzene, benzene, methanol, acetone, formaldehyde, dichloromethane and tetrahydrofuran, were systematically investigated. The relationships between the sensing performances and their properties, including mesostructures, surface areas, pore sizes, carbon contents and surface hydrophilic/hydrophobic interactions, have been achieved. The mesoporous silica-carbon nanocomposites with hexagonal mesostructure exhibit outstanding performance at room temperature to benzene and acetone with high responses, short response (2-3 s) and recovery (16-19 s) time, strong anti-interference to environmental humidity, and long-term stability (less than ~5% loss of the frequency shifts after 42 days). Therefore, the obtained mesoporous silica-carbon nanocomposites have a hopeful prospect in the field of environmental air quality monitoring.