title: Carbon functionalized mesoporous silica-based gas sensors for indoor volatile organic compounds.
abstract: Indoor organic gaseous pollution is a global health problem, which seriously threats the health and life of human all over the world. Hence, it is important to fabricate new sensing materials with high sensitivity and efficiency for indoor volatile organic compounds. In this study, a series of ordered mesoporous silica-based nanocomposites with uniform carbon coatings on the internal surface of silica mesopore channels were synthesized through a simple template-carbonization strategy. The obtained mesoporous silica-carbon nanocomposites not only possess ordered mesostructures, high surface areas (up to ∼759m(2)g(-1)), large and tunable pore sizes (2.6-10.2nm), but also have the improved hydrophobicity and anti-interference capability to environmental humidity. The sensing performances of the mesoporous silica-carbon nanocomposites to volatile organic compounds, such as ethylbenzene, methylbenzene, benzene, methanol, acetone, formaldehyde, dichloromethane and tetrahydrofuran, were systematically investigated. The relationships between the sensing performances and their properties, including mesostructures, surface areas, pore sizes, carbon contents and surface hydrophilic/hydrophobic interactions, have been achieved. The mesoporous silica-carbon nanocomposites with hexagonal mesostructure exhibit outstanding performance at room temperature to benzene and acetone with high responses, short response (2-3s) and recovery (16-19s) time, strong anti-interference to environmental humidity, and long-term stability (less than ∼5% loss of the frequency shifts after 42days). Therefore, the obtained mesoporous silica-carbon nanocomposites have a hopeful prospect in the field of environmental air quality monitoring.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Shanghai Key Lab of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, iChEM and State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, PR China.
authors.forename: Yupu
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Shanghai Key Lab of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, iChEM and State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, PR China.
authors.forename: Junchen
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Shanghai Key Lab of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, iChEM and State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, PR China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Shanghai Key Lab of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, iChEM and State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, PR China.
authors.forename: Dengke
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Shen
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Shanghai Key Lab of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, iChEM and State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, PR China.
authors.forename: Yujuan
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Shanghai Key Lab of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, iChEM and State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, PR China.
authors.forename: Manas
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pal
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Shanghai Key Lab of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, iChEM and State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, PR China.
authors.forename: Haijun
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Shanghai Key Lab of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, iChEM and State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, PR China. Electronic address: botu@fudan.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Bo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Tu
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Laboratory of Advanced Materials, Shanghai Key Lab of Molecular Catalysis and Innovative Materials, iChEM and State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, PR China. Electronic address: dyzhao@fudan.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Dongyuan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Zhao
keywords: Anti–interference; Carbon functional; Gas sensors; Mesoporous silica; Volatile organic compounds (VOCs)