Facile synthesis of porous cubic microstructure of Co3O4 from ZIF-67 pyrolysis and its Au doped structure for enhanced acetone gas-sensing

Recently, Metal-organic framework (MOF) has attracted general attention as self-sacrificial template to produce metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) for gas sensing. In this work, we fabricated a porous cubic microstructure of Co 3 O 4 through the facile pyrolysis of ZIF-67. The obtained Co 3 O 4 sustained a similar cubic morphology with ZIF-67 template, but much improved pore structure was achieved. Moreover, we attempted to modify the Co 3 O 4 with Au nanoparticles . Through a facile post-synthesis adsorption & pyrolysis, the Au nanoparticles with an average size of 15–20 nm were evenly dispersed on the surface of Co 3 O 4 . Then the obtained samples were investigated for acetone gas-sensing. Results showed that both Co 3 O 4 and its Au doped structure could be used for acetone detection, while due to the existence of metal-semiconductor heterojunction and the catalysis and spillover functions of Au nanoparticles, the prepared Au/Co 3 O 4 composite showed much improved acetone response and much shortened response-recovery time than that of the bare Co 3 O 4 structure.