Room temperature NO2 chemiresistive sensing with porous WS2 films

Abstract

Nitrogen dioxide (NO2) is a hazardous air pollutant with a lowered annual mean exposure limit from 40 to 10 µg/m3 (~5 parts-per-billion by volume, ppb) by the World Health Organization in 2021. This motivates the exploration of low-power and cost-efficient sensors that can detect such low concentrations of NO2, exhibit high selectivity against interfering analytes and resilience to humidity fluctuations. Here, a selective, stable and humidity-robust sensor for NO2 sensing at room temperature is presented. Flame-aerosol deposition followed by dry sulfidation results in highly porous (98%) and nanostructured WS2 films. These films exhibit a fivefold increase in response and over an order-of-magnitude reduction in response time, compared to conventional spin-coated films. Remarkable sensing performance down to 1 ppb of NO2 (with a signal-to-noise ratio of 12.9) is achieved with high selectivity (>164) towards environmental interferents including NH3, NO, acetone, H2S, benzene, CO, ethanol, methanol, N2O and toluene. We also reveal high robustness (response change ± 18%) against varying relative humidity (0 – 90%) and response stability over more than 6 months (± 10%). This sensor outperforms previously reported NO2 sensors operating at room temperature, making it well-suited for integration into devices for environmental monitoring or wearables for personal exposure assessment.