Hydrothermal synthesis of assembled sphere-like WO3 architectures and their gas-sensing properties

Unique assembled sphere-like WO3 architectures were successfully synthesized through a facile hydrothermal method in the presence of malic acid followed by subsequent heat treatment. We found that malic acid played a significant role in governing morphologies of WO3·xH2O precursors during hydrothermal process. A possible formation mechanism was also proposed in detail. Experimental results showed that the optimized hydrothermal precursor could be dehydrated to mixed composition of hexagonal and monoclinic WO3 with the unique sphere-like porous architecture after being annealed at 400 °C for 2.5 h. Besides, gas-sensing measurement indicated that the well-defined 3D assembled sphere-like architectures exhibited the highest sensor response to ethanol at the optimal temperature of 250 °C among the samples.