Electrophoretic and field-effect graphene for all-electrical DNA array technology

Nat Commun. 2014 Sep 5:5:4866. doi: 10.1038/ncomms5866.

Abstract

Field-effect transistor biomolecular sensors based on low-dimensional nanomaterials boast sensitivity, label-free operation and chip-scale construction. Chemical vapour deposition graphene is especially well suited for multiplexed electronic DNA array applications, since its large two-dimensional morphology readily lends itself to top-down fabrication of transistor arrays. Nonetheless, graphene field-effect transistor DNA sensors have been studied mainly at single-device level. Here we create, from chemical vapour deposition graphene, field-effect transistor arrays with two features representing steps towards multiplexed DNA arrays. First, a robust array yield--seven out of eight transistors--is achieved with a 100-fM sensitivity, on par with optical DNA microarrays and at least 10 times higher than prior chemical vapour deposition graphene transistor DNA sensors. Second, each graphene acts as an electrophoretic electrode for site-specific probe DNA immobilization, and performs subsequent site-specific detection of target DNA as a field-effect transistor. The use of graphene as both electrode and transistor suggests a path towards all-electrical multiplexed graphene DNA arrays.

Publication types

  • Evaluation Study
  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
  • Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.

MeSH terms

  • Base Sequence
  • Electrodes*
  • Graphite / chemistry*
  • Microscopy, Fluorescence
  • Molecular Sequence Data
  • Nanotechnology / instrumentation
  • Nanotechnology / methods*
  • Oligonucleotide Array Sequence Analysis / instrumentation*
  • Transistors, Electronic*

Substances

  • Graphite