ZIF-8 derived ZnO polyhedrons decorated with biomass derived nitrogen-doped porous carbon for enhanced acetone sensing

Biomass derived nitrogen-doped porous carbon (NPC) has received considerable interest in various fields, resulting from that biomass is abundant, renewable, fast generation and low cost. However, few studies were focused on the gas sensing properties of NPC. In this work, by simple calcination and hydrothermal method, chrysanthemum tea derived NPC is originally introduced on ZIF-8 derived ZnO polyhedrons to form ZnO/NPC heterostructure as a novel acetone sensor. Remarkably, the response of ZnO/NPC towards 100 ppm acetone (25.47) is 8 times more than that of ZnO (3.33) and 14 times higher than that of NPC (1.85). DFT calculations results demonstrate that the adsorption energy between acetone molecules and ZnO/NPC heterostructure is higher than the adsorption energy between acetone molecules and pure NPC (or pure ZnO). These experimental and theoretical results can be adopted for the fundamental investigation of other gas sensing materials based on biomass derived NPC.