Facile fabrication of polyaniline/multi-walled carbon nanotubes/molybdenum disulfide ternary nanocomposite and its high-performance ammonia-sensing at room temperature

This paper reports a high-performance room-temperature ammonia gas sensor based on polyaniline/multi-walled carbon nanotubes/molybdenum disulfide (PANI/MWCNTs/MoS2) ternary nanocomposite prepared via in-situ chemical oxidative polymerization method. The component, morphology, crystallinity, and chemical state of PANI/MWCNTs/MoS2 sample was fully inspected by X-ray diffraction (XRD), fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FT-IR), scanning electron microscope (SEM), energy dispersive spectrometer (EDS), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and transmission electron microscope (TEM), confirming its successful fabrication and reasonability. The ammonia sensing properties of PANI/MWCNTs/MoS2 nanocomposite were investigated at room temperature. The experimental results exhibited excellent properties in terms of high response, fast response/recovery time as well as outstanding repeatability, which were greatly superior to the pure PANI, PANI/MWCNTs and PANI/MoS2 film counterparts. Finally, the potential ammonia-sensing mechanism of the PANI/MWCNTs/MoS2 nanocomposite was systematically discussed, which is attributed to the synergistic effect of the ternary nanomaterials and special interactions at p-n heterojunction. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.