Enhanced 2-butanone sensing properties of CeO2/WO3 heterojunction with multilevel channels inherited from pollen biotemplate.

The ultimate optimization of natural systems in terms of "structure-function-environment adaptation" can provide inspiration for the design of advanced materials. Considering the urgent demand for efficient detection of 2-butanone in industrial safety and environmental monitoring, and the limitations of existing WO3-based gas sensors including low response intensity and poor selectivity, this research focuses on developing modified WO3-based composite materials with enhanced gas sensing performance using natural biological templates. In this work, an immersion process combined with calcination technology was employed to successfully replace the biosensitive scaffolds on pollen grains with gas-sensitive CeO2/WO3 composites. This material exhibits outstanding response to 2-butanone at 185 °C, significantly surpassing the undoped sample while maintaining high selectivity. The outstanding sensing performance is attributed to its unique hierarchical structure and the synergistic effect of the CeO2/WO3 heterostructure. This study provides a new perspective for us to explore low-cost gas sensors with natural biological morphologies and opens up new possibilities for expanding the applications of WO3-based composites.