A systematic review on 2D materials for volatile organic compound sensing

Abstract

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are organic chemicals that are toxic and detrimental to the human body and the environment. Therefore, a great mandate for the selective as well as sensitive recognition of VOCs, process control, environmental monitoring, and medical diagnosis is necessary. In the last few years, various forms of nanomaterials have been explored for gas and VOCs sensing with the detection on the miniaturized scale using various sensing approaches including optical, chemiresistive, and electrochemical techniques. Two-dimensional (2D) materials have received tremendous attention owing to their unique structure and extraordinary physical as well as chemical properties which make them an attractive platform for numerous applications including electronics, optoelectronics, energy storage and conversion, catalysis, and chemical sensors. 2D-materials offer unique sensing properties with extremely high sensitivity which is particularly important for the detection of toxic pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and toxic VOCs such as benzene and formaldehyde. This review emphasizes the state-of-the-art recent developments in synthesis, VOCs sensing performance and sensing mechanism of numerous 2D-materials including graphene, graphene oxide (GO), graphene nanoplatelets (Gr-NPls), graphene nanosheets (GNs), transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs), hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN), MXenes, black phosphorus (BP) and graphdiyne etc. A brief descriptions of various synthesis approaches of 2D materials are given along with their fundamental VOCs sensing mechanisms. Finally, the performances of various 2D-materials derived VOC sensors are summarized.