Polyoxometalates (POMs) are a series of molecular metal
compounds
based on W and Mo elements, exhibiting excellent physical and chemical
properties. POMs have been widely used in the fields of photoelectric
materials, catalytic materials, and coordination chemistry. In recent
years, POMs have emerged in the field of chemiresistive gas sensors.
They can work as electron acceptors and improve the gas-sensing performance
of traditional sensing materials by means of capturing electrons from
semiconductors, separating electrons produced by light excitation
or thermal excitation and delaying the recombination of electrons
and holes. So far, the highest sensing sensitivity response of POMs-based
chemiresistive gas sensor is 231 to 1 ppm NO2 gas. In this
review, an overview is investigated about how POMs have evolved as
sensing materials in gas sensors. First, some POMs and POMs-based
sensing materials in recent years are introduced and classified. After
that, brief analyses for each kind of sensing materials are provided.
Then we compare the reported POMs-based sensors in different sensing
parameters. Finally, the future outlooks are discussed on the basis
of the current developments. This work is the first comprehensive
overview of POMs-based chemiresistive gas sensors. This work can provide
valuable information for developing high-performance POMs-based gas
sensors.