Detecting oil-dissolved gases in transformer is crucial for internal discharge fault diagnosis. Methane (CH 4 ), acetylene (C 2 H 2 ), ethylene (C 2 H 4 ), ethane (C 2 H 6 ) are some of the important fault characteristic gases in oil-immersed transformer discharge faults. The concentration and production rate can effectively reflect the insulation performance of oil-paper power transformer. In order to realize the effective detection of gases in the oil, the Au atom-doped MoS 2 (Au-MoS 2 ) monolayer was proposed. To study adsorption properties of different gases, the density functional theory (DFT) was used to study applicability of Au-MoS 2 two-dimensional (2D) nanomaterials for gas sensor. Meanwhile, the adsorption properties, sensitivity and electronic behavior were calculated. The results show that the doped systems have a better sensing performance for C 2 H 2 , C 2 H 4 and C 2 H 6 . And Au-MoS 2 monolayer has a unique response to C 2 H 2 with appropriate adsorption energy (-1.056 eV) and charge transfer (0.252 e), which are far more than CH 4 (-0.065 eV, 0.037 e). Based on the above data, Au-MoS 2 monolayer has selectivity for different oil-dissolved gases.