Enhanced xylene sensing performance using Ag-VO loaded mesoporous graphitic carbon nitride.

A 3-dimensional ordered cubic mesoporous Ag-V2O5 loaded graphitic carbon nitride (mpg-CN) hybrid was fabricated via a facile nanocasting technique using mesoporous silica as the hard template and its sensing response towards xylene gas was investigated in detail. The physicochemical properties of the as prepared nanocomposite were estimated by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), elemental dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) and BET surface area analysis. The hybridized Ag-V2O5/mpg-CN nanocomposite prepared by template inversion of KIT-6 silica showed temperature reliant response towards the detection of common VOCs (xylene, formaldehyde, 2-propanol and benzene) usually found in our indoor environment. Sensing response values of 4.9 for 50 ppm and 12.7 for 500 ppm were reported for xylene gas at an operating temperature of 40 °C. Besides, average response/recovery times of 6.1/4.1 s (xylene), 7.7/5.1 s (formaldehyde), 8.7/6.6 s (2-propanol) and 9.5/8.4 s (benzene) were recorded for Ag-V2O5/mpg-CN, which demonstrated the potential of utilizing the as-prepared sensor in commercial real-time sensing applications.