Recently, the research team led by ProfessorZhang Yonghui from the College of Material and Chemical Engineering, in collaboration with ProfessorDeng Yonghui from Fudan University, published a research paper titled "Understanding and Quantifying the Contribution of Oxygen Species in Hydrogen Sensing by Pd/In₂O₃ Nanosheet" in the international top-tier journal Angew. Chem. Int. Ed.(ranked in the top tier of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with an impact factor of 17). Researcher Yang Xuanyu from the College of Material and Chemical Engineering is the first author, with graduate student Ju Shaokang listed as the student first author. ProfessorZhang Yonghui, ProfessorDuMiao, and ProfessorDeng Yonghui are the corresponding authors of the paper.

The safety monitoringof hydrogen, the core carrier of the zero-carbon energy system, represents a critical step in the industrialization of hydrogen energy.Currently, metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) sensors exhibit a lack of quantitative understanding for the specific contribution mechanisms of surface weakly adsorbed oxygen (O_W), strongly adsorbed oxygen (O_S), and lattice oxygen (O_L), which limits the precise design of materials. The research team innovatively used argon gas pre-treatment and temperature regulation, combined with electronic transfer quantification calculations, to clarify for the first time that the contributions of O_W, O_S, and O_L to hydrogen sensing are 12.7-15.1%, 71.1-73%, and 12.7-15.5%, respectively. The Pd-In-O sensor achieved a response value of 45.3 for 50 ppm H₂ at 110°C, with a response/recovery time of 10 s/41 s. A series of in-situ characterizations confirmed that both surface adsorbed oxygen and lattice oxygen are involved in the sensing process,and revealed that oxygen vacancies on the material surface facilitate the activation of oxygen, which enhances the mobility of oxygen species on the material surface. Theoretical simulation results indicated that the presence of oxygen vacancies reduces the d-band center of Pd, optimizing hydrogen dissociation on Pd and improving overflow effects. The sensor also exhibited excellent response performance to H₂ at room temperature and was able to immediately activate a buzzer when simulating a hydrogen leak in the laboratory, demonstrating its potential for hydrogen leak detection near room temperature.

This research was funded and supported by the Interdisciplinary Innovation Research Group Project of the Natural Science Foundation of Henan Province (Grant No. 232300421005), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 22375186and 21771166), the Natural Science Foundation of Henan Province (Grant No. 252300421192), the Henan Provincial Key Research Program for Universities (Grant No. 24ZX012), the Henan Provincial Science and Technology Research Joint Fund Project (Grant No. 235200810084), and other related projects.

Journal article link: http://doi.org/10.1002/anie.202518988