We have shown that the sensitivity of carbon nanotube (CNT) based sensors can be enhanced as high as 74 times through surface modification by using the inductively coupled plasma chemical vapor deposition method with oxygen. The plasma treatment power was maintained as low as 10 W within 20 s, and the oxygen plasma was generated far away from the sensors to minimize the plasma damage. From X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis, we found that the concentration of oxygen increased with the plasma treatment time, which implies that oxygen functional groups or defect sites were generated on the CNT surface.
We fabricated carbon nanotube (CNT) based chemical sensors for marine applications by photolithography process, where the electrodes were insulated by photoresist exposing only the carbon nanotube sensing section (2 microm gap width) for detection of ammonium ions (NH4+) in 35 per thousand NaCI solution used as artificial seawater environment. The I-V curve of the CNT sensor was measured by sweeping the source-drain voltage from -3 to 3 V and the on/off ratio of the CNT sensor was measured to be 20 when the gate voltage was swept from -5 to 5 V and from these results the CNTs were found to appear as a p-type semiconductor. All of the cocktail solutions prepared for experiment were measured to have -pH 6 which implied 99.9% of NH4+ remained ionized. We successfully detected 10, 100, 1000 nM (0.18, 1.8, 18 ppb) concentration of NH4+ in 35 per thousand NaCI solutions by using the CNT sensor.
We investigated a selective assembly method of fabricating single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) on a silicon-dioxide (SiO2) surface by using only a photolithographic process; then, we fabricated 8 x 8 field-emission transistor (FET) arrays for sensor applications. Photoresist (PR) patterns were made on a SiO2-grown Si substrate by using the photolithographic process. This PR-patterned substrate was dipped into a SWCNT solution dispersed in dichlorobenzene (DCB). The PR patterns were removed by using acetone. As a result, selectively-assembled SWCNT channels in 8 x 8 FET arrays could be fabricated between source and drain electrodes without complicated chemical steps using octadecyltrichlorosilane (OTS). Finally, we successfully fabricated 8 x 8 SWCNT-based multi-channel FET arrays by using our novel self-assembly method.
We modified the conductance of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) in carbon nanotube field-effect transistors by oxygen plasma post process (OPPP) to obtain consistent conductance after the CNTs were adsorbed by self-assembly monolayer method which is suitable for large scale mass production but hardly yields consistent conductance due to various complex factors involved. We have shown that the conductance of the CNTs can be tuned from 47 μS to zero by varying the OPPP time from 0 to 15 s. The reduction rate of the conductance was 9.8%/s implying that a tenth of the CNTs was removed every second.
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