Electrospinning Derived NiO/NiFeO Fiber-in-Tube Composite for Fast Triethylamine Detection under Different Humidity.

Designing high-performance triethylamine gas sensors with the stable gas response and low resistance variation in air under a wide relative humidity range is expected for human health and environmental surveillance. Here, a novel porous NiO/NiFeO fiber-in-tube nanostructure is prepared by the electrospinning process. The characterizations related to microstructure and surface morphology are carried out. Meanwhile, the gas sensing performance of the porous fiber-in-tube NiO/NiFeO materials is evaluated and compared systematically. The results indicate that the introduction of NiO as the second component can not only reduce the baseline resistance of NiFeO gas sensors dramatically but also optimize the gas sensing performance to a significant extent. Especially, the fabricated sensor based on the NiO/NiFeO fiber-in-tube with a Ni/Fe molar ratio of 1.5 exhibits the best performance. The gas response while detecting 50 ppm triethylamine at 300 °C is about 3.6 times higher than that with Ni/Fe molar ratio of 0.5. Moreover, the response values become more stable, and the baseline resistance has a lower variation under a wide relative humidity range, demonstrating the excellent humidity resistance. These phenomena might be ascribed to the distinctive fiber-in-tube nanostructure as well as the heterojunction between NiFeO and NiO.