A disposable polymer field effect transistor (FET) for pH measurement

In this paper, a fully disposable polymer field effect transistor (polymer-FET) for pH measurement has been proposed, fabricated and fully characterized. A well-defined poly (3-hexylthiophene) (P3HT) is adopted as the semi-conducting material and used as active layer. The polymer FET fabricated on a plastic substrate shows I-V characteristics that are comparable to those of Si-based field effect transistor (Si-FET). The polymer FET sensor has been integrated with a microfluidic channel and tested as a pH sensor, which shows a good linearity in the source-drain current versus the pH concentration. This work has envisaged a possibility of mass-producing low cost and disposable polymer sensors/circuits. Due to the low temperature process, the polymer-FET can be easily integrated with disposable lab-on-a-chips.