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Improved synthesis and growth of graphene oxide for field effect transistor biosensors

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Abstract

Reduced graphene oxide (RGO) has many advantages over graphene such as low-cost, aqueous processable and industrial-scalable. However, two main limitations that prevent the use of RGO in electronics are the high electrical resistance and large electrical resistance deviation between fabricated devices. This limits RGO’s use in biosensors, capacitors and other electronic devices. Herein, we present (1) a modified Hummer’s method to obtain large RGO flakes via in-situ size fractionation and (2) the novel growth of RGO which can bridge the gaps in-between existing RGO flakes. Together, these two processes reduced the electrical resistance drastically from 1.99E + 06 to 4.68E + 03 Ω/square and the standard deviation decreased from 80.5 % to 16.5 %. The RGO was then fabricated into a field-effect transistor biosensor. A 1 pmol to 100 nmol change in Cytochrome C protein corresponded to a 3 % change in electrical resistance. The reported improved RGO synthesis method and subsequent growth enable large-scale application of RGO in practical electronic devices such as biosensors.

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Acknowledgments

The research was funded by the Institute for Sports Research (ISR) of Nanyang Technological University (NTU). The research was also partly supported by NTU-HUJ-BGU Nanomaterials for Energy and Water Management Programme under the Campus for Research Excellence and Technological Enterprise (CREATE), that is supported by the National Research Foundation, Prime Minister’s Office, Singapore. The author would like to thank Dr. Alagappan Palaniappan from NTU’s Centre for Biomimetic Sensor Science (CBSS) for aiding with the ethanol CVD setup.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798, Singapore

    Jingfeng Huang, Hu Chen, Lin Jing & Alfred Iing Yoong Tok

  2. Institute for Sports Research, Nanyang Technological University, 50 Nanyang Avenue, Singapore, 639798, Singapore

    Jingfeng Huang, Hu Chen & Lin Jing

  3. School of Engineering, Republic Polytechnic, 9 Woodlands Ave 9, Singapore, 738984, Singapore

    Jingfeng Huang

  4. Department of Chemistry, Royal College of Science, Imperial College, Exhibition Road, London, SW72AZ, UK

    Derrick Fam

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  1. Jingfeng Huang
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Correspondence to Alfred Iing Yoong Tok.

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Huang, J., Chen, H., Jing, L. et al. Improved synthesis and growth of graphene oxide for field effect transistor biosensors. Biomed Microdevices 18, 61 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10544-016-0092-9

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