Polyhedral Zn2SnO4: Synthesis, enhanced gas sensing and photocatalytic performance

Polyhedral Zn2SnO4 (ZTO) have been successfully fabricated with a facile hydrothermal method. Their morphologies, gas sensing and photocatalytic properties were carefully studied. The morphologies were found to be dependent on the growth time. Morphologies achieved include cubes and octahedrons with the reaction time of 16 h and 36 h. A plausible mechanism for the formation of octahedral ZTO microstructure was proposed. The gas sensing properties of triethylamine (TEA) for ZTO microstructures showed that the sensor response (S = Ra/Rg) reach to be 37 at 100 ppm, which is much larger than the previous reports. Furthermore, the detection limit can be down to 5 ppm-level with a response value about 11 at 200 °C. For the photocatalytic performance, the octahedral ZTO structures (24 h) exhibited faster photocatalytic degradation efficiency toward methylene blue (MB) than others (16 h and 36 h) which can be ascribed to their specific octahedral structures.