Metal-core@metal oxide-shell nanomaterials for gas-sensing applications: a review

With an ever-increasing number of applications in many advanced fields, gas sensors are becoming indispensable devices in our daily life. Among different types of gas sensors, conductometric metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) gas sensors are found to be the most appealing for advanced applications in the automotive, biomedical, environmental, and safety sectors because of the their high sensitivity, reduced size, and low cost. To improve their sensing characteristics, new metal oxide-based nanostructures have thus been proposed in recent years as sensing materials. In this review, we extensively review gas-sensing properties of core@shell nanocomposites in which metals as the core and metal oxides as the shell structure, both of nanometer sizes, are assembled into a single metal@metal oxide core-shell. These nanostructures not only combine the properties of both noble metals and metal oxides, but also bring unique synergetic functions in comparison with single-component materials. Up-dated achievements in the synthesis and characterization of metal@metal oxide core-shell nanostructures as well as their use in MOS sensors are here reported with the main objective of providing an overview about their gas-sensing properties.