Oxygen vacancy and interface effect dual modulation of SnS/SnO heterojunction for boosting formaldehyde detection at low temperature.

Formaldehyde (HCHO) is a harmful volatile organic pollutant, which is commonly found in interior decoration and furniture products. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a gas sensor that can quickly and accurately detect formaldehyde for human health and environmental protection. In order to achieve this goal, in this work, SnS/SnO heterostructure was synthesized by in-situ sulfurization process on the basis of SnO nanospheres, and its formaldehyde sensing performance was studied. After testing, it was found that the gas sensor based on SnS/SnO heterojunction has more excellent gas sensing performance than pure SnO gas sensor at the same operating temperature (100 °C). Specifically, SnS/SnO-2 (Sn:S = 3:2) has the advantages of high sensitivity (4.01 at 0.1 ppm), excellent selectivity, low theoretical detection limit (13.26 ppb), good humidity resistance and long-term stability. The excellent sensing performance of SnS/SnO sensors for formaldehyde detection is mainly attributed to the n-n heterojunction formed by SnS and SnO, which generates a built-in electric field to accelerate the electron transport in the material, the higher oxygen vacancy sites adsorb a large number of reactive gas molecules to promote the oxidation of formaldehyde molecules, and the unique porous structure to promote the transmission and diffusion of gases and increase the surface area to provide more adsorption sites and reactive centers for gas molecules. Therefore, the construction of SnS/SnO heterostructures will be an effective way to develop next-generation formaldehyde gas sensors with higher sensing performance.