Single-Atom Pt-Functionalized Ti3C2Tx Field-Effect Transistor for Volatile Organic Compound Gas Detection

MXenes have shown exceptional electrochemical properties and demonstrate great promise in chemiresistive gas analysis applications. However, their sensing applications still face low sensitivity and specificity, slow response, and poor stability among the many challenges. Herein, a novel synthetic approach is reported to produce single-atom Pt (Pt SA)-implanted Ti3C2Tx MXene nanosheets as the sensing channel in field-effect transistor (FET) gas sensors. This is a pioneer study of single-atom catalysts loaded on MXene nanosheets for gas detection, which demonstrates that Pt SA can greatly enhance the sensing performance of pristine Ti3C2Tx. The Pt SA-Ti3C2Tx sensor exhibits high sensitivity and specificity toward ppb level (a low detection limit of 14 ppb) triethylamine (TEA) with good multicycle sensing performance. Moreover, the mechanism study and density functional theory (DFT) simulation show that the chemical sensitization effect and TEA adsorption enhancement from highly catalytic and uniformly distributed Pt SA lead to the enhanced sensing performances. This work presents a new prospect of single-atom catalysts for gas analysis applications, which will promote the development of cutting-edge sensing techniques for gas detection for public health and environment.