Here an alternative preparation route, pulsed laser ablation in liquid (LAL) of FeCl₃ solution, is reported to facilely synthesize crystalline iron oxychloride (FeOCl) nanosheets at ambient conditions. Well-dispersed spherical gold (Au) nanoparticles (NPs) are simultaneously decorated on surface of the FeOCl nanosheets, which possess (010) preferred orientations with microsized dimensions in planar and tens of nanometers in thickness. The crystalline size and composition of the Au/FeOCl can be effectively modulated by simply changing FeCl₃ concentrations. Technical observations illustrate that the nanocomposites possess good thermal stability and surface of which adsorbs abundant H₂O molecularly and oxygen species chemically. The FeOCl nanosheets are formed through chemical side hydrolysis reaction in the localized liquid region with gradient temperature, which is derived from thermal transfer of LAL-induced plasma plume. The Au/FeOCl nanocomposites, as chemiresistors, show exceptionally high sensing response and perfect selectivity to HCl gas at room temperature. The excellent sensing behavior is ascribed to the Au-NP-enhanced surface chemisorption of oxygen species and selective adsorption of HCl for FeOCl nanosheets. The synthesized Au/FeOCl nanocomposites provide a new candidate for exclusive HCl detection. And the proposed LAL-assisted fabrication routes might open new perspectives for formation of other metal oxychloride compounds.

CuO–ZnO micro/nanoporous array-films are synthesized by transferring a solution-dipped self-organized colloidal template onto a device substrate and sequent heat treatment. Their morphologies and structures are characterized by X-ray diffraction, field-emission scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and X-ray photoelectron spectrum analysis. Based on the sensing measurement, it is found that the CuO–ZnO films prepared with the composition of [Cu²⁺]/[Zn²⁺]=0.005, 0.01, and 0.05 all show a nice sensitivity to 10 ppm H₂S. Interestingly, three different zones exist in the patterns of gas responses versus H₂S concentrations: a platform zone, a rapidly increasing zone, and a slowly increasing zone. Further experiments show that the hybrid CuO–ZnO porous film sensor exhibits shorter recovery time and better selectivity to H₂S gas against other interfering gases at a concentration of 10 ppm. These new sensing properties may be due to a depletion layer induced by p–n junction between p-type CuO and n-type ZnO and high chemical activity of CuO to H₂S. This work will provide a new construction route of ZnO-based sensing materials, which can be used as H₂S sensors with high performances.

Homogenous thin films are preferable for high-performance gas sensors because of their remarkable reproducibility and long-term stability. In this work, a low-temperature fabrication route is presented to prepare crack-free and homogenous metal oxide periodic porous thin films by oxygen plasma irradiation instead of high temperature annealing by using a sacrificial colloidal template. Rutile SnO₂ is taken as an example to demonstrate the validity of this route. The crack-free and homogenous porous thin films are successfully synthesized on the substrates in situ with electrodes. The SnO₂ porous thin film obtained by plasma irradiation is rich in surface OH groups and hence superhydrophilic. It exhibits a more homogenous structure and lower resistance than porous films generated by annealing. More importantly, such thin films display higher sensitivity, a lower detection threshold (100 ppb to acetone) and better durability than those that have been directly annealed, resulting in enhanced gas-sensing performance. The presented method could be applied to synthesize other metal oxide homogenous thin films and to fabricate gas-sensing devices with high performances.

Surface patterns of nanoshell arrays play an important role in diverse applications including surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) sensors, lithium-ion batteries, solar cells, and optical devices. This paper describes an innovative surface nanopatterning technique for realizing large-scale ordered arrays of metallic spherical nanoshells with well-defined structures. Ag nanoshell arrays are prepared using polystyrene sphere templates by an electrophoretic process in Ag colloidal solutions. The fabricated Ag nanoshell arrays have a high controllability of the structural parameters, including the diameter, the surface roughness, and the intershell spacing, giving rise to the tunable properties of nanoshell arrays. As an example, tunable SERS and localized surface plasmon resonance of the nanoshell arrays are demonstrated by controlling the structural parameters. The surface nanopatterning technique shown in this paper is a general fabrication process in achieving not only metallic nanoshell arrays, but also nanoshell arrays of semiconductors and metallic oxides.

A simple and flexiable route is presented to fabricate ordered micro/nanostructured porous films, based on a monolayer colloidal crystal template and solution dipping. In₂O₃ is chosen as a main model material to demonstrate the validity of the given fabrication strategy. It has been shown that the porous films with different microstructures, can be constructed directly on any desired substrate (with flat, curved, or even rough surface). The separately tunable sensitivity and response time in a large range and the gas sensing performances with both high sensitivity and fast response have been obtained only by controlling microstructures of the porous films. High stability, good reproducibility, and selectivity of the sensing performance have been achieved. Further, micro/nanostructured porous film sensors with desired sensing performances are designed and fabricated. This work could be important towards practical applications of micro/nanostructured porous-film-based sensors in the near future.

A novel ZnO hierarchical micro/nanoarchitecture is fabricated by a facile solvothermal approach in an aqueous solution of ethylenediamine (EDA). This complex architecture is of a core/shell structure, composed of dense nanosheet-built networks that stand on a hexagonal-pyramid-like microcrystal (core part). The ZnO hexagonal micropyramid has external surfaces that consist of a basal plane (000) and lateral planes {011}. The nanosheets are a uniform thickness of about 10 nm and have a single-crystal structure with sheet-planar surfaces as {20} planes. These nanosheets interlace and overlap each other with an angle of 60° or 120°, and assemble into a discernible net- or grid-like morphology (about 100 nm in grid-size) on the micropyramid, which shows a high specific surface area (185.6 m² g⁻¹). Such a ZnO micro/nanoarchitecture is new in the family of ZnO nanostructures. Its formation depends on the concentration of the EDA solution as well as on the type of zinc source. A two-step sequential growth model is proposed based on observations from a time-dependent morphology evolution process. Importantly, such structured ZnO has shown a strong structure-induced enhancement of photocatalytic performance and has exhibited a much better photocatalytic property and durability for the photodegradation of methyl orange than that of other nanostructured ZnO, such as the powders of nanoparticles, nanosheets, and nanoneedles. This is mainly attributed to its higher surface-to-volume ratio and stability against aggregation. This work not only gives insight into understanding the hierarchical growth behaviour of complex ZnO micro/nanoarchitectures in a solution-phase synthetic system, but also provides an efficient route to enhance the photocatalytic performance of ZnO, which could also be extended to other catalysts, such as the inherently excellent TiO₂, if they are of the same hierarchical micro/nanoarchitecture with an open and porous nanostructured surface layer.