Improved performance of triethylamine sensors through defect formation in La-doped MoO3 nanorods

The rod-like pure MoO3 and La-doped MoO3 (L-MoO3) sensitive materials were prepared by hydrothermal method. A series of structural analyses, including XRD, element mapping and XPS, revealed that La was uniformly doped into the crystal lattice of MoO3. Furthermore, the gas sensitive studies showed that La doping significantly improved the gas sensitive performance of the sensors to triethylamine. The response value of L-MoO3 sensor is 1148 to 50 ppm triethylamine, which is five times that of pure MoO3, and has outstanding stability and selectivity. Preliminary studies have shown that La doping enables the material to generate more active sites and larger baseline resistance, and the combination of these advantages contributes to structural sensitization and synergies to enhance the gas-sensitive performance of the L-MoO3 sensors. This work prepared a high response TEA gas sensors, and verified the improvement of MoO3 gas-sensitive performance by La doping.