Sorted and aligned single-walled carbon nanotube networks for transistor-based aqueous chemical sensors

Detecting trace amounts of analytes in aqueous systems is important for health diagnostics, environmental monitoring, and national security applications. Single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) are ideal components for both the sensor material and active signal transduction layer because of their excellent electronic properties and high aspect ratio consisting of entirely surface atoms. Submonolayer arrays, or networks of SWNTs (SWNTnts) are advantageous, and we show that topology characteristics of the SWNT network, such as alignment, degree of bundling, and chirality enrichment strongly affect the sensor performance. To enable this, thin-film transistor (TFT) sensors with SWNTnts were deposited using a one-step, low-cost, solution- based method on a polymer dielectric, allowing us to achieve stable low-voltage operation under aqueous conditions. These SWNT-TFTs were used to detect trace concentrations, down to 2 ppb, of dimethyl methylphosphonate (DMMP) and trinitrotoluene (TNT) in aqueous solutions. Along with reliable cycling underwater, the TFT sensors fabricated with aligned, sorted nanotube networks (enriched with semiconductor SWNTs) showed a higher sensitivity to analytes than those fabricated with random, unsorted networks with predominantly metallic charge transport.