ZnO quantum dots @ nitrogen and sulfur Co-doped porous carbon nanosheets for the detection of lung cancer biomarkers in exhaled breath

The development of non-selective sensors as an e-nose system for breath analysis application generates unique breath prints delineating the fundamental body metabolism aiding early diagnosis of lung cancer. In this work, size dependent ZnO quantum dots (QDs) were controlled by pH and finely dispersed on nitrogen and sulfur co-doped porous carbon nanosheet (CNS) for exploration of their chemi-resistive gas sensing property. Application of these nanocomposites to different lung cancer biomarkers (toluene, isoprene acetone and benzene) depicts unique responses to each at different operating temperatures. Particularly, the composite with lower ZnO QDs size on sulfur rich porous carbon nanosheet (SC-SQD) exhibited 2.5 times of the response to toluene compared to the composite with higher QDs size and sulfur poor porous carbon nanosheet (NC-LQD) in the concentration range between 1 ppm and 5 ppm. It was demonstrated that for 5 ppm of toluene, a response of 31.4 was observed with a response and recovery time of 18 s and 58 s, respectively. The sensor exhibited an estimated lower limit of detection of 800 ppb. Besides, the sensor exhibited a gradual decrease (∼9.55%) in response to 5 ppm toluene at 90% humidity. This superior performance can be explained by the density of defect states, reactive oxygen species (ROS) and oxidation states of functionalization.