Interfacial energy barrier tuning of hierarchical Bi₂O₃/WO₃ heterojunctions for advanced triethylamine sensor

Traditional triethylamine (TEA) sensors suffer from the drawback of serious cross-sensitivity due to the low charge-transfer ability of gas-sensing materials. Herein, an advanced anti-interference TEA sensor is designed by utilizing interfacial energy barriers of hierarchical Bi₂O₃/WO₃ composite. Benefiting from abundant slit-like pores, desirable defect features, and amplification effect of heterojunctions, the sensor based on Bi₂O₃/WO₃ composite with 40% Bi₂O₃ (0.4-Bi₂O₃/WO₃) demonstrates remarkable performance in terms of faster response/recovery time (1.7-fold/1.2-fold), higher response (2.1-fold), and lower power consumption (30 ℃-decrement) as compared with the pristine WO₃ sensor. Furthermore, the composite sensor exhibits long-term stability, reproducibility, and negligible response towards interfering molecules, indicating the promising potential of Bi₂O₃/WO₃ heterojunctions in anti-interference detection of low-concentration TEA in real applications. This work not only offers a rational solution to design advanced gas sensors by tuning the interfacial energy barriers of heterojunctions, but also provides a fundamental understanding of hierarchical Bi₂O₃ structures in the gas-sensing field.