Ru-decorated WO3 nanosheets for efficient xylene gas sensing application

In this work, WO 3 nanosheets are synthesized successfully through the hydrothermal method . Ru is thereafter efficiently loaded on the surface of WO 3 using the ethylene glycol-assisted solvothermal method. The gas sensing test shows that 0.5 wt% Ru-WO 3 exhibits the best performance towards xylene detection. Compared with the pure WO 3 sensor, the gas response of the sensor based on 0.5 wt% Ru-WO 3 in 100 ppm xylene increases from 11 to 73, and the operating temperature decreases from 375 °C to 280 °C. And an ultra-low detection limit of 25 ppb is obtained. In addition, the gas sensing performance of the Ru-loaded WO 3 sensor is much better than that of Au, Pt and Pd-loaded WO 3 sensors. The enhanced gas sensing performance can be attributed to the catalytic overflow of Ru and the formation of heterojunction between RuO 2 and WO 3. It is expected that this finding gives rise to further efforts on efficient and low-cost xylene sensors that are based on Ru-loaded WO 3 .