Deoxyribonucleic Acid Sensitive Graphene Field-Effect Transistors

Abstract

We have investigated the effect of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) adsorption on a graphene field-effect-transistor (FET) device. We have used graphene which is grown on a Ni substrate by chemical vapour deposition. The Raman spectra of our graphene indicate its high quality, and also show that it consists of only a few layers. The current-voltage characteristics of our bare graphene strip FET show a hole conduction behavior, and the gate sensitivity of 0.0034 mu A/V, which is reasonable with the size of the strip (5 x 10 mu m(2)). After the adsorption of 30 base pairs single-stranded poly (dT) DNA molecules, the conductance and gate operation of the graphene FET exhibit almost 11% and 18% decrease from those of the bare graphene FET device. The observed change may suggest a large sensitivity for a small enough (nm size) graphene strip with larger semiconducting property.