Electrochemical Exfoliation of Naturally Occurring Layered Mineral Stibnite (Sb2S3) for Highly Sensitive and Fast Room-Temperature Acetone Sensing

The analysis of exhaled acetone is used as a noninvasive diagnosis for diabetes. Compared with traditional breath analysis tools, chemiresistive gas sensors have attracted more attention for real-time monitoring, owing to the possibility of integration and facile operation. However, most reported room-temperature acetone gas sensors suffer from complicated preparation, costly raw materials, or relatively long response and recovery time. In this work, naturally occurring layered mineral stibnite is used to prepare Sb2S3 by a one-step method of electrochemical cathodic exfoliation. As-prepared Sb2S3 displays an amorphous feature with porous, hierarchical nanostructure, and its formation mechanism is rationally proposed. The porous, hierarchical and amorphous Sb2S3-based gas sensors show excellent gas sensing performance toward acetone at room temperature, with the high response up to 1.46 toward 100 ppm acetone, and fast gas response and recovery toward acetone at room temperature (7 s for response and 30 s for one response-recovery cycle), which is one of the top three shortest response times among the reported room-temperature acetone gas sensors. The electrochemical cathodic exfoliation may offer a new strategy for facile preparation of mineral materials, and the discussed devices may hold great promise for developing cost-effective and high-performance acetone sensors at room temperature.