Correlation of Volumetric Vaporsorption and Vapor Sensing Phenomenon of Flower-Like MoS₂-Based Sensor

An innovative approach is reported with an aim to effectively correlate room temperature alcohol vapor (methanol, ethanol, and 2-propanol) sensing performance of flower-like MoS2 sphere-based devices with the corresponding vacuum volumetric vaporsorption study. Hydrothermally derived flower-like MoS2 sphere-based resistive devices were tested to detect the above species and the steady-state characteristics of the sensor (response magnitude and baseline drift) were directly and effectively correlated with the corresponding physisorption measurements carried out using Quantachrome Autosorb iQ. Response magnitude of the sensing layers having different porosity and effective surface area was duly predicted from the volume of adsorbed vapor species on the respective surfaces. Moreover, the baseline drift of the sensors was directly correlated with the amount of target species that remain chemisorbed. Considering rising and falling (transient characteristics) edges of the dynamic response curve, it was found that response time is predominantly governed by the physisorption phenomena, while the recovery is determined by both the mechanism (physidesorption and chemidesorption), though later having relatively lower influence. The highest response magnitude ( $\sim $ 77%) was achieved for sensor originated from the highest deposition time (24 h) toward methanol. It was duly correlated with its highest Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area (10 $\text{m}^{{2}}$ /g) as well as its highest methanol adsorption at room temperature (116 cm3/g) among the lot. The highest baseline drift ( $12^{\circ }{)}$ of 24-h deposited device was explained in the light of the highest open-loop gap (30 cm3/g).