Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) detection is crucial across various fields due to their significant impact on health, environmental integrity, industrial processes, and agriculture. Among various VOCs detection methods, chemiresistive sensors offer several advantages over other sensors, such as their ease of production, cost-effectiveness, and portability, which makes them a promising choice for real applications. In recent years, two-dimensional (2D) materials-based chemiresistive sensors attracted considerable attention for gas sensing applications because of their distinctive physical and chemical characteristics. Their atomic-scale thickness provides an exceptionally high surface-to-volume ratio and abundant active sites, which significantly enhance gas adsorption and improve sensing sensitivity. What is most important, compared to metal oxide-based sensors with high working temperatures, 2D materials-based sensors could work at room temperature, which makes it possible to do real-time sensing, such as real-time sensing of VOCs released by stressed plants.

 

Among the various 2D materials, transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) attracted significant attention for VOC sensing because of their tunable electronic structures, as well as their high surface-to-volume ratio. These characteristics help facilitate efficient interactions with gas molecules and make TMDs promising candidates for high-performance VOC detection. Molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) in particular offers several advantages in the detection of VOCs, such as high surface area, tunable electronic properties, and strong interaction with VOCs. MoS2-based sensors show high sensitivity, selectivity, and stability, which are necessary for accurate VOC detection. Functionalization and hybridization with other materials, such as metal nanoparticles or carbon nanotubes, further improve performance. In this work, a chemiresistive sensor based on MoS2/SWCNT/AuNP hybrid nanomaterials deposited on flexible gold IDE electrodes will be introduced, whose good sensitivity and selectivity to specific kinds of VOC gases offer the potential for real-time detection of VOC markers of stress in crops.