Metal-organic frameworks-derived In2O3 microtubes/Ti3C2Tx MXene composites for NH3 detection at room temperature

Metal organic frameworks (MOFs) have gained intensive concern in gas sensors owing to their features of well-controlled morphologies and shared metal site. In this article, the hollow In2O3 microbutes were successfully anchored on the surface of exfoliated Ti3C2Tx MXene through a self-sacrificial template treatment and subsequent calcination strategy. The surface morphology and elemental composition features of as-obtained MOFs-derived In2O3/Ti3C2Tx MXene products were analyzed via a battery of characterization strategies. In2O3 microbutes (with an average length around 2–5 µm) as an active center component were riveted to the appearance of Ti3C2Tx MXene. Gas-sensing measurements demonstrated that the response of the present gas sensor is 60.6% for 5 ppm NH3 gas at RT of 25 ℃ (24.8% relative humidity), and the detection limit is as low as 5 ppm. Additionally, the MOFs-derived In2O3/Ti3C2Tx MXene sensor illustrated excellent linear response (R2 = 0.9785) within a certain scale (5–100 ppm), ultra-fast response/recovery rate (3/2 s), outstanding selectivity, good reversibility and strong long term stability. It is confirmed through theoretical and experimental perspectives that this work is expected to serve as a valuable reference for the designed high performance NH3 sensor in practice.