Zhao Wei-Na, Yun Na, Dai Zhen-Hua, Li Ye-Fei
Guangzhou Key Laboratory of Environmental Catalysis and Pollution Control, Guangdong Key Laboratory of Environmental Catalysis and Health Risk Control, Institute of Environmental Health and Pollution Control, School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology Guangzhou 51006 China
School of Chemical Engineering and Technology, Guangdong Industry Polytechnic Guangzhou 510300 China.
RSC Adv. 2020 Jan 8;10(3):1261-1270. doi: 10.1039/c9ra09069j. eCollection 2020 Jan 7.
The development of a stringent sensor to detect low levels of acetone, yielding the potential for the point-of-care clinical diagnosis of diabetes, is still a great challenge but is urgently required. Most studies have focused on TiCT , yet other types of MXenes with good performance are rare. Herein, an emerging kind of MXene, VCT , has been prepared from VAlC the selective etching of the Al layer using aqueous HF at room temperature (RT), and its performance as an acetone sensor is presented. A VCT based acetone sensor delivers good performance, as demonstrated by its low working temperature of 25 °C, low detection limit of 1 ppm (lower than the 1.8 ppm diabetes diagnosis threshold), and high selectivity towards acetone in a mixed gas of acetone and water vapor, hopefully showing promise for application in the much faster and earlier diagnosis of diabetes. VCT MXene is used for the first time in the field of acetone detection in this work, hopefully opening up a path for the investigation of applications of MXene in gas sensors, and such exciting findings distinguish VCT as a comparable material to the well-known TiCT . In addition, we used DFT calculations to explore the mechanisms that result in the superior selectivity for acetone with respect to water vapor. Hopefully, the proposed mechanisms combining experimental results and theoretical study will shed light on the design and production of new high-performance acetone sensors.
开发一种能够检测低浓度丙酮的精密传感器，从而实现糖尿病的即时临床诊断，这仍然是一项巨大的挑战，但却迫切需要。大多数研究都集中在TiCT 上，然而具有良好性能的其他类型的MXenes却很少见。在此，一种新型的MXene，即VCT ，已通过在室温（RT）下使用氢氟酸水溶液对VAlC 中的Al层进行选择性蚀刻制备而成，并展示了其作为丙酮传感器的性能。基于VCT 的丙酮传感器表现出良好的性能，其工作温度低至25°C，检测限低至1 ppm（低于1.8 ppm的糖尿病诊断阈值），并且在丙酮和水蒸气的混合气体中对丙酮具有高选择性，有望在糖尿病的更快、更早诊断中展现应用前景。在这项工作中，VCT MXene首次用于丙酮检测领域，有望为MXene在气体传感器中的应用研究开辟一条道路，这些令人兴奋的发现使VCT 成为与著名的TiCT 相当的材料。此外，我们使用密度泛函理论（DFT）计算来探索导致对丙酮相对于水蒸气具有卓越选择性的机制。有望将实验结果与理论研究相结合所提出 的机制将为新型高性能丙酮传感器的设计和生产提供启示。
