Facile Synthesis of Co3O4/CoMoO4 Heterostructure Nanosheets for Enhanced Acetone Detection

Although p-type semiconductors exhibit highly selective and stable chemiresistive gas sensing performances compared to conventional n-type semiconductors, their low sensitivity had long impeded their practical development. In this work, we developed highly porous Co3O4/CoMoO4 heterostructure nanosheets (NSs) with enhanced sensitivity and superior stability toward acetone gas through a facile solution-based approach with Mo-impregnated Co-based metal–organic frameworks as the starting material. The spontaneous formation of a large number of p–p heterojunctions at the Co3O4–CoMoO4 interface would facilitate the adsorption of oxygen and acetone molecules, as verified by density functional theory calculations. Consequently, experimental results showed that the Co3O4/CoMoO4 NSs have a greatly enhanced response of 8.5 toward 5 ppm acetone, which is 7.1 times higher than that of pure Co3O4 NS, without involving any noble metal catalysts. Moreover, the limit of detection of the Co3O4/CoMoO4 NSs was as low as 10 ppb. Altogether, we propose that our synthetic approach for the engineering of p–p heterojunctions is an effective strategy for the future development of highly practical and sensitive gas sensors based on p-type semiconductors.