Electronic transport characteristics of electrolyte-gated conducting polyaniline nanowire field-effect transistors

Abstract

We investigate the electronic transport characteristics of an electrolyte-gated conducting polyaniline (PANI) nanowire field-effect transistor (FET) assembled between two Au electrodes on SiO2/Si substrate using nanochannel-assisted chemical oxidative polymerization. This is the first demonstration that the current-voltage characteristics for a PANI nanowire FET exhibit significant hysteresis, which is typically greater on the positive sweep of the potential than on the negative sweep. We suggest that this hysteresis is due to changes in the PANI structure and the effects of Coulombic repulsion in PANI nanowires on oxidation process. We also present degradation properties of PANI nanowire FETs with electrochemical gate potential. (C) 2009 American Institute of Physics. [DOI: 10.1063/1.3176444]