Electrical Characteristics and pH Response of a Parylene-H Sensing Membrane in a Si-Nanonet Ion-Sensitive Field-Effect Transistor

Abstract

We report the electrical characteristics and pH responses of a Si-nanonet ion-sensitive field-effect transistor with ultra-thin parylene-H as a gate sensing membrane. The fabricated device shows excellent DC characteristics: a low subthreshold swing of 85 mV/dec, a high current on/off ratio of ~10⁷ and a low gate leakage current of ~10^-10 A. The low interface trap density of 1.04 × 10¹² cm^-2 and high field-effect mobility of 510 cm²V^-1s^-1 were obtained. The pH responses of the devices were evaluated in various pH buffer solutions. A high pH sensitivity of 48.1 ± 0.5 mV/pH with a device-to-device variation of ~6.1% was achieved. From the low-frequency noise characterization, the signal-to-noise ratio was extracted as high as ~3400 A/A with the lowest noise equivalent pH value of ~0.002 pH. These excellent intrinsic electrical and pH sensing performances suggest that parylene-H can be promising as a sensing membrane in an ISFET-based biosensor platform.