Chelating-Template-Assisted <i>in Situ</i> Encapsulation of Zinc Ferrite Inside Silica Mesopores for Enhanced Gas-Sensing Characteristics

A facile <i>in situ</i> approach has been designed to synthesize zinc ferrite/mesoporous silica guest–host composites. Chelating surfactant, <i>N</i>-hexadecyl ethylenediamine triacetic acid, was employed as structure-directing agent to fabricate mesoporous silica skeleton and simultaneously as complexing agent to incorporate stoichiometric amounts of zinc and iron ions into silica cavities. On this basis, spinel zinc ferrite nanoparticles with grain sizes less than 3 nm were encapsulated in mesoporous channels after calcination. The silica mesostructure, meanwhile, displayed a successive transformation from hexagonal <i>p</i>6<i>mm</i> through bicontinuous cubic <i>Ia</i>3̅<i>d</i> to lamellar phase with increasing the dopant concentration in the initial template solution. In comparison with zinc ferrite nanopowder prepared without silica host, the composite with bicontinuous architecture exhibited higher sensitivity, lower detection limit, lower optimum working temperature, quicker response, and shorter recovery time in sensing performance toward hydrogen sulfide. The significant improvements are from the high surface-to-volume ratio of the guest oxides and the three-dimensional porous structure of the composite. We believe the encapsulation route presented here may pave the way for directly introducing complex metal oxide into mesoporous silica matrix with tailorable mesophases for applications in sensing or other fields