Effect of Pyrene-1 Boronic Acid Functionalization on the Electrical Characteristics of Carbon Nanotube Field-Effect Transistor

Carbon nanotube field-effect transistor (CNT-FET) based sensor devices are widely used in sensing applications of biomolecules in high sensitivity. In addition, covalent functionalization process can increase the interaction between the CNTs and biological molecules. In this article, we present the effect of boronic acid functionalization on the electrical properties of the CNT-FET due to boronic acid and its derivatives have been widely used for the glucose recognition. For this purpose, CNT-FET transistors were fabricated on SiO 2 /Si substrates utilising high purity semiconducting nanotubes as the channel layer and functionalized with pyrene-1-boronic acid. It was found that boronic acid functionalization causes a variation in electrical parameters of CNT-FET transistors such as conductance, transconductance, threshold voltage, field effect mobility, resistance, hysteresis gap, and charge transfer of carriers per unit length. The results show that pyrene-1-boronic acid treatment was observed to have a significant beneficial effect on the electrical properties of the CNT-FET and pyrene-1-boronic acid functionalized CNT-FET sensor devices may have great potential for glucose sensing applications. Graphical Abstract