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A sensitivity-enhanced field-effect chiral sensor

Nature Materials volume 7, pages 412–417 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Organic thin-film transistor sensors have been recently attracting the attention of the plastic electronics community for their potential exploitation in novel sensing platforms. Specificity and sensitivity are however still open issues: in this respect chiral discrimination—being a scientific and technological achievement in itself—is indeed one of the most challenging sensor bench-tests. So far, conducting-polymer solid-state chiral detection has been carried out at part-per-thousand concentration levels. Here, a novel chiral bilayer organic thin-film transistor gas sensor—comprising an outermost layer with built-in enantioselective properties—is demonstrated to show field-effect amplified sensitivity that enables differential detection of optical isomers in the tens-of-parts-per-million concentration range. The ad-hoc-designed organic semiconductor endowed with chiral side groups, the bilayer structure and the thin-film transistor transducer provide a significant step forward in the development of a high-performance and versatile sensing platform compatible with flexible organic electronic technologies.

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Figure 1: Bilayer OTFT chiral sensor structure.
Figure 2: PTO–PTA-bilayer OTFT sensor response to (S)-(−)-β-citronellol vapours.
Figure 3: PTO achiral sensing transistor exposed to (S)-(−)-β-citronellol and (R)-(+)-β-citronellol.
Figure 4: Sensitivity enhancement with OTFT sensors exposed to citronellol enantiomers.
Figure 5: Calibration curves of the chiral bilayer OTFTs exposed to (S)-(−)-β-citronellol, (R)-(+)-β-citronellol and to the racemic mixture as well as to (R)-(−)- and (S)-(+)-carvone.
Figure 6: Thickness-independent PTO OTFT ΔI responses.

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Acknowledgements

We are indebted to E. A. Chandross and G. Horowitz for advice. L. Sabbatini, P. Iliade and M. D. Angione are acknowledged for discussions. We are grateful to L. Dimo for assistance in the LS depositions. Italian MIUR ‘Bando DM 1105 del 9/10/2002 Progetto n.ro 100/2’, Progetto FIRB 2003 ‘SYNERGY RBNE0 3S7XZ_001’ and ‘PRIN-06 Project—2006037708—Plastic bio-FET sensors’ are acknowledged for partial financial support. While the present manuscript was under revision another paper was published (Huang, J., Miragliotta, J., Becknell, A. & Katz, H. E., J. Am. Chem. Soc. 129, 9366-9376 (2007)) proposing a two-layer OTFT sensor.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Dipartimento di Chimica, Università degli Studi di Bari, 70126, Bari, Italy

    Luisa Torsi, Gianluca M. Farinola, Francesco Marinelli, M. Cristina Tanese, Francesco Babudri, Francesco Palmisano, P. Giorgio Zambonin & Francesco Naso

  2. Centro di Eccellenza TIRES, Università degli Studi di Bari, 70126, Bari, Italy

    Luisa Torsi, Francesco Palmisano & P. Giorgio Zambonin

  3. Dipartimento di Chimica, CNR ICCOM Bari, Università degli Studi di Bari, 70126, Bari, Italy

    Omar Hassan Omar, Francesco Babudri & Francesco Naso

  4. Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Innovazione, Università degli Studi di Lecce, 73100, Lecce, Italy

    Ludovico Valli

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Torsi, L., Farinola, G., Marinelli, F. et al. A sensitivity-enhanced field-effect chiral sensor. Nature Mater 7, 412–417 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2167

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