Hu Qitao, Chen Si, Solomon Paul, Zhang Zhen
Division of Solid State Electronics, Department of Electrical Engineering, Uppsala University, BOX 65, SE-75103 Uppsala, Sweden.
IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY 10598, USA.
Sci Adv. 2021 Dec 3;7(49):eabj6711. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.abj6711.
Electrical sensors have been widely explored for the analysis of chemical/biological species. Ion detection with single charge resolution is the ultimate sensitivity goal of such sensors, which is yet to be experimentally demonstrated. Here, the events of capturing and emitting a single hydrogen ion (H) at the solid/liquid interface are directly detected using sub–10-nm electrical double layer–gated silicon nanowire field-effect transistors (SiNWFETs). The SiNWFETs are fabricated using a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor compatible process, with a surface reassembling step to minimize the device noise. An individually activated surface Si dangling bond (DB) acts as the single H receptor. Discrete current signals, generated by the single H-DB interactions via local Coulomb scattering, are directly detected by the SiNWFETs. The single H-DB interaction kinetics is systematically investigated. Our SiNWFETs demonstrate unprecedented capability for electrical sensing applications, especially for investigating the physics of solid/liquid interfacial interactions at the single charge level.
电气传感器已被广泛用于分析化学/生物物种。具有单电荷分辨率的离子检测是此类传感器的最终灵敏度目标，但尚未通过实验得到证实。在此，使用亚10纳米的电双层栅控硅纳米线场效应晶体管（SiNWFET）直接检测在固/液界面捕获和发射单个氢离子（H⁺）的事件。SiNWFET采用互补金属氧化物半导体兼容工艺制造，并经过表面重组步骤以最小化器件噪声。单个激活的表面硅悬空键（DB）充当单个H⁺受体。通过局部库仑散射由单个H⁺-DB相互作用产生的离散电流信号由SiNWFET直接检测。系统地研究了单个H⁺-DB相互作用动力学。我们的SiNWFET展示了用于电传感应用的前所未有的能力，特别是用于在单电荷水平研究固/液界面相互作用的物理过程。
