Au Decorated MoS2 for Selective Detection of Acetone at Room Temperature - Modeling, Simulation, and Validation

Sensitive gas sensors are becoming important for protecting human health and environmental monitoring. Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) has been considered a potential material for high sensitivity and selectivity acetone gas detection at ambient temperature due to its high certain area of surface and numeral active sites. Taking into account the limited research on the theoretical simulation of MoS
2
gas sensors, this work is focused on the modeling and simulation of MoS
2
-based acetone gas sensors using COMSOL Multiphysics. The incorporation of gold nanoparticles on MoS
2
causes further enhancement of sensitivity toward acetone. The MoS
2
-Au sensor showed excellent sensitivity with revelation to acetone gas with various concentrations from 10 ppm to 120 ppm. Furthermore, the sensor exhibited excellent selectivity toward acetone against various interfering gases. The simulation results were further verified by comparing them with fabricated sensors by Chen et al. There was a strong correlation between the simulated and real sensor results, demonstrating superior sensitivity at room temperature. Thus, before going through the fabrication process, the sensor model that was obtained could be utilized for predicting how different gas sensors would behave.