Needle-Shaped WO<sub>3</sub> Nanorods for Triethylamine Gas Sensing
Qi Hu, Jiaqi He, Junyu Chang, Jianmei Gao, Jiahui Huang, Liang Feng
Abstract
The accurate and rapid monitoring of triethylamine (TEA) is highly desired for human health, environmental protection, and food safety. Herein, we have fabricated a WO3 sample with a morphology of needle-shaped nanorods via a simple hydrothermal method and subsequent calcination. The WO3 needle-shaped nanorods with 5 μm length and 400 nm diameter possess a uniform and homogeneous morphology, which avails large-scale industrialization. The sensing based on needle-shaped WO3 nanorods exhibits an ultrasensitive response to TEA, with a response up to 6.7 toward 1 ppm TEA at 250 °C. The outstanding selectivity and repeatability are observed as well. The excellent sensing performance is tentatively attributed to the uniform and large-scale morphology, highly active C–N bonds in TEA, and the effective interaction between WO3 and TEA. Furthermore, the sensor is directly employed to monitor the TEA given off from a grass carp in 48 h, and a good linearity (R2 = 0.996) between the response and preserving time is obtained, proving its promising prospect in daily use. The architecture strategy opens an available route for large-scale practical fabrication of WO3 needle-shaped nanorods, and it is a pioneering attempt to apply the sensor for trace TEA detection in marine food safety testing.