DNA-decorated graphene chemical sensors

Graphene is a true two dimensional material with exceptional electronic properties and enormous potential for practical applications. Graphene's promise as a chemical sensor material has been noted but there has been relatively little work on practical chemical sensing using graphene, and in particular how chemical functionalization may be used to sensitize graphene to chemical vapors. Here we show one route towards improving the ability of graphene to work as a chemical sensor by using single stranded DNA as a sensitizing agent. The resulting broad response devices show fast response times, complete and rapid recovery to baseline at room temperature, and discrimination between several similar vapor analytes.Comment: 7 pages, To appear in Applied Physics Letter

Gas Sensing Properties of Single Conducting Polymer Nanowires and the Effect of Temperature

We measured the electronic properties and gas sensing responses of template-grown poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)/poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT/PSS)-based nanowires. The nanowires have a "striped" structure (gold-PEDOT/PSS-gold), typically 8um long (1um-6um-1um for each section, respectively) and 220 nm in diameter. Single-nanowire devices were contacted by pre-fabricated gold electrodes using dielectrophoretic assembly. A polymer conductivity of 11.5 +/- 0.7 S/cm and a contact resistance of 27.6 +/- 4 kOhm were inferred from measurements of nanowires of varying length and diameter. The nanowire sensors detect a variety of odors, with rapid response and recovery (seconds). The response (R-R0)/R0 varies as a power law with analyte concentration.Comment: 4 figures 8 pages, add 2 reference

High On/Off Ratio Graphene Nanoconstriction Field Effect Transistor

We report a method to pattern monolayer graphene nanoconstriction field effect transistors (NCFETs) with critical dimensions below 10 nm. NCFET fabrication is enabled by the use of feedback controlled electromigration (FCE) to form a constriction in a gold etch mask that is first patterned using conventional lithographic techniques. The use of FCE allows the etch mask to be patterned on size scales below the limit of conventional nanolithography. We observe the opening of a confinement-induced energy gap as the NCFET width is reduced, as evidenced by a sharp increase in the NCFET on/off ratio. The on/off ratios we obtain with this procedure can be larger than 1000 at room temperature for the narrowest devices; this is the first report of such large room temperature on/off ratios for patterned graphene FETs.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures, to appear in Smal