Two-Dimensional Transition Metal Dichalcogenide Tunnel Field-Effect Transistors for Biosensing Applications.

Field-effect transistor (FET) biosensors based on two-dimensional (2D) materials have drawn significant attention due to their outstanding sensitivity. However, the Boltzmann distribution of electrons imposes a physical limit on the subthreshold swing (SS), and a 2D-material biosensor with sub-60 mV/dec SS has not been realized, which hinders further increase of the sensitivity of 2D-material FET biosensors. Here, we report tunnel FETs (TFETs) based on a SnSe2/WSe2 heterostructure and observe the tunneling effect of a 2D material in aqueous solution for the first time with an ultralow SS of 29 mV/dec. A bilayer dielectric (Al2O3/HfO2) and graphene contacts, which significantly reduce the leakage current in solution and contact resistance, respectively, are crucial to the realization of the tunneling effect in solution. Then, we propose a novel biosensing method by using tunneling current as the sensing signal. The TFETs show an extremely high pH sensitivity of 895/pH due to ultralow SS, surpassing the sensitivity of FET biosensors based on a single 2D material (WSe2) by 8-fold. Specific detection of glucose is realized, and the biosensors show a superb sensitivity (3158 A/A for 5 mM), wide sensing range (from 10-9 to 10-3 M), low detection limit (10-9 M), and rapid response rate (11 s). The sensors also exhibit the ability of monitoring glucose in complex biofluid (sweat). This work provides a platform for ultrasensitive biosensing. The discovery of the tunneling effect of 2D materials in aqueous solution may stimulate further fundamental research and potential applications.

[1]  S. Chattopadhyay,et al.  2D materials-based nanoscale tunneling field effect transistors: current developments and future prospects , 2022, npj 2D Materials and Applications.

[2]  B. Jonker,et al.  Emergent Moiré Phonons Due to Zone Folding in WSe2-WS2 Van der Waals Heterostructures. , 2022, ACS nano.

[3]  F. Fang,et al.  Screening of Endocrine Disrupting Potential of Surface Waters via an Affinity-Based Biosensor in a Rural Community in the Yellow River Basin, China. , 2022, Environmental science & technology.

[4]  S. Sarkar,et al.  Noise analysis of MoTe2-based dual-cavity MOSFET as a pH sensor , 2022, Semiconductor Science and Technology.

[5]  Zhaoping Li,et al.  A wearable electrochemical biosensor for the monitoring of metabolites and nutrients , 2022, Nature Biomedical Engineering.

[6]  S. Timur,et al.  Smartphone-Based Multiplexed Biosensing Tools for Health Monitoring , 2022, Biosensors.

[7]  X. Duan,et al.  Integrated Urinalysis Devices Based on Interface‐Engineered Field‐Effect Transistor Biosensors Incorporated With Electronic Circuits , 2022, Advanced materials.

[8]  Yang Zhang,et al.  Aptamer-Functionalized Carbon Nanotube Field-Effect Transistor Biosensors for Alzheimer's Disease Serum Biomarker Detection. , 2022, ACS sensors.

[9]  G. Humbert,et al.  Highly Sensitive Plasmonic Waveguide Biosensor Based on Phase Singularity-Enhanced Goos–Hänchen Shift , 2022, Biosensors.

[10]  Z. Cui,et al.  Durability Study of Thermal Transfer Printed Textile Electrodes for Wearable Electronic Applications. , 2022, ACS applied materials & interfaces.

[11]  L. Niu,et al.  Self-adhesive and printable tannin–graphene supramolecular aggregates for wearable potentiometric pH sensing , 2022, Electrochemistry Communications.

[12]  R. Rahimi,et al.  Low-Cost Flexible Glass-Based pH Sensor via Cold Atmospheric Plasma Deposition. , 2022, ACS applied materials & interfaces.

[13]  K. Nigam,et al.  Sensitivity Analysis of Junction Free Electrostatically Doped Tunnel-FET Based Biosensor , 2021, Silicon.

[14]  Qiong Tian,et al.  Recent advances in flexible and wearable sensors for monitoring chemical molecules , 2022, Nanoscale.

[15]  Bo-Cheng Guo,et al.  2D Material‐Based Optical Biosensor: Status and Prospect , 2021, Advanced science.

[16]  E. Valera,et al.  Detection of SARS-CoV-2 Virus Amplification Using a Crumpled Graphene Field-Effect Transistor Biosensor , 2021, ACS sensors.

[17]  Hafiz M.N. Iqbal,et al.  Enzyme (Single and Multiple) and Nanozyme Biosensors: Recent Developments and Their Novel Applications in the Water-Food-Health Nexus , 2021, Biosensors.

[18]  L. Niu,et al.  Lattice Proton Intercalation to Regulate WO3‐Based Solid‐Contact Wearable pH Sensor for Sweat Analysis , 2021, Advanced Functional Materials.

[19]  Bowen Zhu,et al.  Interface Engineering of Metal‐Oxide Field‐Effect Transistors for Low‐Drift pH Sensing , 2021, Advanced Materials Interfaces.

[20]  Huanyu Cheng,et al.  Laser-induced graphene non-enzymatic glucose sensors for on-body measurements. , 2021, Biosensors & bioelectronics.

[21]  Peter L. Voyvodic,et al.  Programmable receptors enable bacterial biosensors to detect pathological biomarkers in clinical samples , 2021, Nature communications.

[22]  A. M. van der Zande,et al.  Ultrasensitive Detection of Dopamine, IL‐6 and SARS‐CoV‐2 Proteins on Crumpled Graphene FET Biosensor , 2021, Advanced materials technologies.

[23]  T. Sakata,et al.  Solution-Gated Ultrathin Channel Indium Tin Oxide-Based Field-Effect Transistor Fabricated by a One-Step Procedure that Enables High-Performance Ion Sensing and Biosensing. , 2021, ACS applied materials & interfaces.

[24]  Huanyu Cheng,et al.  Fabricating functional circuits on 3D freeform surfaces via intense pulsed light-induced zinc mass transfer. , 2021, Materials today.

[25]  M. Hamilton,et al.  Two-Dimensional-Material-Based Field-Effect Transistor Biosensor for Detecting COVID-19 Virus (SARS-CoV-2) , 2021, ACS nano.

[26]  N. Dai,et al.  DNA-based functionalization of two-dimensional MoS2 FET biosensor for ultrasensitive detection of PSA , 2021 .

[27]  R. Kapsa,et al.  Antifouling Strategies for Electrochemical Biosensing: Mechanisms and Performance toward Point of Care Based Diagnostic Applications. , 2021, ACS sensors.

[28]  H. Zeng,et al.  Modulating tunneling width and energy window for high-on-current two-dimensional tunnel field-effect transistors , 2021 .

[29]  J. Zhong,et al.  Phase controllable synthesis of SnSe and SnSe2 films with tunable photoresponse properties , 2021 .

[30]  R. Campbell,et al.  Structure- and mechanism-guided design of single fluorescent protein-based biosensors , 2021, Nature Chemical Biology.

[31]  Yunlei Xianyu,et al.  Recent advances in gold nanoparticles-based biosensors for food safety detection. , 2021, Biosensors & bioelectronics.

[32]  Dong Rip Kim,et al.  Rapid custom prototyping of soft poroelastic biosensor for simultaneous epicardial recording and imaging , 2020, Nature Communications.

[33]  Huanyu Cheng,et al.  Conformal manufacturing of soft deformable sensors on the curved surface , 2021, International Journal of Extreme Manufacturing.

[34]  A. Mulchandani,et al.  Nano-FET-enabled biosensors: Materials perspective and recent advances in North America. , 2020, Biosensors & bioelectronics.

[35]  Soojin Park,et al.  Energy-efficient tunneling field-effect transistors for low-power device applications: challenges and opportunities. , 2020, ACS applied materials & interfaces.

[36]  M.Z.H. Khan,et al.  Ultrasensitive detection of pathogenic viruses with electrochemical biosensor: State of the art , 2020, Biosensors and Bioelectronics.

[37]  A. Centeno,et al.  Selective ion sensing with high resolution large area graphene field effect transistor arrays , 2020, Nature Communications.

[38]  Lianmao Peng,et al.  Wafer-Scale Uniform Carbon Nanotube Transistors for Ultrasensitive and Label-Free Detection of Disease Biomarkers. , 2020, ACS nano.

[39]  A. Kuwana,et al.  Graphene field-effect transistor biosensor for detection of biotin with ultrahigh sensitivity and specificity , 2020, Biosensors and Bioelectronics.

[40]  Sung‐Yool Choi,et al.  Vertical‐Tunneling Field‐Effect Transistor Based on WSe2‐MoS2 Heterostructure with Ion Gel Dielectric , 2020, Advanced Electronic Materials.

[41]  M. Luisier,et al.  WSe2/SnSe2 vdW heterojunction Tunnel FET with subthermionic characteristic and MOSFET co-integrated on same WSe2 flake , 2020, npj 2D Materials and Applications.

[42]  Hong Zhang,et al.  Temperature-dependent Raman spectroscopy studies of 1–5-layer WSe2 , 2020, Nano Research.

[43]  Chunxiang Zhu,et al.  Extended Gate Reference-FET (REFET) Using 2D h-BN Sensing Layer for pH Sensing Applications , 2020, IEEE Electron Device Letters.

[44]  Deepti Kakkar,et al.  Recent Advances and Progress in Development of the Field Effect Transistor Biosensor: A Review , 2019, Journal of Electronic Materials.

[45]  Yuan Liu,et al.  Band-Offset Degradation in van der Waals Heterojunctions , 2019, Physical Review Applied.

[46]  Wen-Yih Chen,et al.  Field-Effect Transistor Biosensors for Biomedical Applications: Recent Advances and Future Prospects , 2019, Sensors.

[47]  Adam Bolotsky,et al.  Two-Dimensional Materials in Biosensing and Healthcare: from In Vitro Diagnostics to Optogenetics and Beyond. , 2019, ACS nano.

[48]  H. Hsu,et al.  Modularized Field-Effect Transistor Biosensors. , 2019, Nano letters.

[49]  Jingjing Wang,et al.  Magnetic Graphene Field-Effect Transistor Biosensor for Single-Strand DNA Detection , 2019, Nanoscale research letters.

[50]  C. Young,et al.  High-stability pH sensing with a few-layer MoS2 field-effect transistor , 2019, Nanotechnology.

[51]  G. Sumana,et al.  Recent developments in biosensors to combat agricultural challenges and their future prospects , 2019, Trends in Food Science & Technology.

[52]  Zheyao Wang,et al.  Silicon nanowire pH sensors fabricated with CMOS compatible sidewall mask technology , 2019, Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical.

[53]  Heike Riel,et al.  Silicon Nanowire Field Effect Transistor Sensors with Minimal Sensor-to-Sensor Variations and Enhanced Sensing Characteristics. , 2018, ACS nano.

[54]  Dong-Ho Kang,et al.  Highly Sensitive and Reusable Membraneless Field-Effect Transistor (FET)-Type Tungsten Diselenide (WSe2) Biosensors. , 2018, ACS applied materials & interfaces.

[55]  Chunxiang Zhu,et al.  Low-Frequency Noise in Layered ReS2 Field Effect Transistors on HfO2 and Its Application for pH Sensing. , 2018, ACS applied materials & interfaces.

[56]  Peng Li,et al.  Ultra-sensitive suspended atomically thin-layered black phosphorus mercury sensors. , 2017, Biosensors & bioelectronics.

[57]  David-Wei Zhang,et al.  Tunable SnSe2 /WSe2 Heterostructure Tunneling Field Effect Transistor. , 2017, Small.

[58]  Chao Li,et al.  Quasi-Two-Dimensional Metal Oxide Semiconductors Based Ultrasensitive Potentiometric Biosensors. , 2017, ACS nano.

[59]  Sungjoo Lee,et al.  Tunneling field effect transistor integrated with black phosphorus-MoS2 junction and ion gel dielectric , 2017 .

[60]  Y. Xiao,et al.  Field-effect transistors of high-mobility few-layer SnSe2 , 2016, 1609.03742.

[61]  P. Manivasakan,et al.  Phase controlled synthesis of SnSe and SnSe2 hierarchical nanostructures made of single crystalline ultrathin nanosheets , 2015 .

[62]  K. Banerjee,et al.  MoS₂ field-effect transistor for next-generation label-free biosensors. , 2014, ACS nano.

[63]  Yanyan Yu,et al.  Direct electron transfer of glucose oxidase and biosensing for glucose based on PDDA-capped gold nanoparticle modified graphene/multi-walled carbon nanotubes electrode. , 2014, Biosensors & bioelectronics.

[64]  Charles M. Lieber,et al.  Subthreshold regime has the optimal sensitivity for nanowire FET biosensors. , 2010, Nano letters.

[65]  Priscilla Kailian Ang,et al.  Solution-gated epitaxial graphene as pH sensor. , 2008, Journal of the American Chemical Society.

[66]  Mark A. Reed,et al.  Label-free immunodetection with CMOS-compatible semiconducting nanowires , 2007, Nature.