Carbon Nitride Decorated Ball-Flower like Co3O4 Hybrid Composite: Hydrothermal Synthesis and Ethanol Gas Sensing Application

Recently, semiconducting metal oxide (SMO) gas sensors have attracted the attention of researchers for high conductivity, labile features by environment, low cost, easy preparation, etc. However, traditional SMOs have some defects such as higher operating temperature and lower response value, which greatly limit their application in the field of gas sensor. In this work, the carbon nitride decorated ball-flower like Co3O4 composite was successfully synthesized via a facile hydrothermal method, the composition and morphology of the as-synthesized samples were studied by the techniques of X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), Field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), Transmission electron microscopy (TEM), Fourier transform infrared spectrometer (FT-IR) and N-2-sorption. As a consequence, the pure Co3O4 and the carbon nitride decorated Co3O4 both possess ball-flower like structure, and the as-synthesized carbon nitride decorated Co3O4 composite exhibits significant sensing properties to ethanol which is 1.6 times higher than that of pure Co3O4, furthermore, the composite possesses high selectivity and stability towards ethanol detection.