Two-Dimensional Vanadium Carbide MXene for Gas Sensors with Ultrahigh Sensitivity Toward Nonpolar Gases

The sensitive detection of explosive and flammable gases is an extremely important safety consideration in today's industry. Identification of trace amounts of nonpolar analytes at ambient temperatures, however, is still a challenge because of their weak adsorption, and very few studies have been able to achieve it via a chemiresistive mechanism. Herein, we demonstrate the high performance of 2D vanadium carbide MXene (V₂CTx) gas sensors with ultrahigh sensitivity toward nonpolar gases. The fabricated 2D V₂CTx sensor devices consisting of single-/few-layer 2D V₂CTx on polyimide film were able to detect both polar and nonpolar chemical species including hydrogen and methane with a very low limit of detection of 2 and 25 ppm, respectively, at room temperature (23 °C). The performance of the fabricated V₂CTx gas sensors in detection of nonpolar gases surpasses that of previously reported state-of-the-art gas sensors based on other 2D materials.