Novel facile detection of persistent organic pollutants using highly sensitive gas sensor

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) are greatly noxious chemicals in environment, and they can cumulate in organisms and transfer between different species. Therefore, it is significant to detect POPs for both environmental evaluation and further treatment. However, developing facile approach for the detection of POPs still remains a challenge so far. In this paper, we report an innovative method for facile detection of POPs using gas sensor for the first time. Porous SnO2 nanostructures with a special tri-walled structure prepared via hydrothermal route and annealing process, were employed as gas-sensing materials. Through gas measurements, it was revealed that the as-fabricated gas sensor exhibited highly sensitive performance towards target POPs, including methoxychlor, mirex, p,p′-DDT, and aldrin. Moreover, we found that target POPs were distinguishable by extracting characteristics in kinetic curves of gas adsorption–desorption. As the presented detecting approach is facile without the requirements of complex operations, expensive and bulky instruments, it is expected that it would be developed as a promising method for the detection of POPs, and thereby showing its significance for environmental monitoring.