Fabrication and characterization of carbon nanotube field-effect transistor biosensors

Abstract

We report the fabrication of carbon nanotube field-effect transistors for biosensing applications and the development of protocols for reliable protein and DNA sensing. The sensing method we employ is 'label free', relying only on the intrinsic charge of the biological molecule of interest. We discuss fabrication issues that we have solved, for example the preparation of clean surfaces, and the sensing protocol issues that we have encountered. Polylysine and ss-dna, highly charged biological molecules, are used as model systems to illustrate the performance of our biosensors.