Novel porous orange-peel-like Au/SnO2/ZnO nanosheets with highly sensitive and selective performance to ethanol

•Novel Porous orange-peel-like nanosheets were synthesized using one-step method.•The addition of Au increased the oxygen vacancy and provided more adsorption sites.•The porous structure promoted the transmission and diffusion of target gas.•The sensor exhibited high sensitivity, ultra-fast response and enhanced selectivity. Gas sensors are expected to be applied in the field of disease diagnosis and environmental monitoring. However, there are still many challenges in developing highly sensitive and selective gas sensors. In this work, an ethanol sensor based on novel porous orange-peel-like nanosheets was obtained through an electrospinning method followed by calcining procedure. The Au/SnO2/ZnO porous nanosheets showed the excellent response of 36.2 towards 100 ppm ethanol, which was more than 6 times higher than that of pristine SnO2 sensor. What’s more, it also exhibited good selectivity and fast response/recovery ability (2/59 s). The synergistic effects of porous curly structures, n-n heterojunction and Au catalysis may lead to the improved performance of Au/SnO2/ZnO sensor.