Conductometric Response-Triggered Surface-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy for Accurate Gas Recognition and Monitoring Based on Oxide-wrapped Metal Nanoparticles

Accurate and efficient gas monitoring is still a challenge because the existing sensing techniques mostly lack specific identification of gases or hardly meet the requirement of real-time readout. Herein, we present a strategy of conductometric response-triggered surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) for such gas monitoring, via designing and using ultrathin oxide-wrapped plasmonic metal nanoparticles (NPs). The oxide wrapping layer can interact with and capture target gaseous molecules and produce the conductometric response, while the plasmonic metal NPs possess strong SERS activity. In this strategy, the conductometric gas sensing is performed throughout the whole monitoring process, and once a conductometric response is generated, it will trigger SERS measurements, which can accurately recognize molecules and hence realize gas monitoring. The feasibility of this strategy has been demonstrated via using ultrathin SnO2 layer-wrapped Au NP films to monitor gaseous 2-phenylethanethiol molecules. It has been shown that the monitoring is rapid, accurate, and quantifiable. There exist optimal values of working temperature and SnO2 layer thickness, which are about 100 °C and 2.5 nm, respectively, for monitoring gaseous 2-phenylethanethiol. The monitoring signal intensity has a linear relation with the gas concentration in the range from 1 to 100 ppm on a logarithmic scale. Furthermore, the monitoring limits are at the ppm level for some typical gases, such as 2-phenylethanethiol, cyclohexanethiol, 1-dodecanethiol, and toluene. This study establishes the conductometric response-triggered SERS, which enables accurate gas recognition and real-time monitoring.