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Highly ordered nanowire arrays on plastic substrates for ultrasensitive flexible chemical sensors

Nature Materials volume 6, pages 379–384 (2007)Cite this article

Abstract

The development of a robust method for integrating high-performance semiconductors on flexible plastics could enable exciting avenues in fundamental research and novel applications. One area of vital relevance is chemical and biological sensing, which if implemented on biocompatible substrates, could yield breakthroughs in implantable or wearable monitoring systems. Semiconducting nanowires (and nanotubes) are particularly sensitive chemical sensors because of their high surface-to-volume ratios. Here, we present a scalable and parallel process for transferring hundreds of pre-aligned silicon nanowires onto plastic to yield highly ordered films for low-power sensor chips. The nanowires are excellent field-effect transistors, and, as sensors, exhibit parts-per-billion sensitivity to NO2, a hazardous pollutant. We also use SiO2 surface chemistries to construct a ‘nano-electronic nose’ library, which can distinguish acetone and hexane vapours via distributed responses. The excellent sensing performance coupled with bendable plastic could open up opportunities in portable, wearable or even implantable sensors.

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Figure 1: Illustration of the steps for transfer printing SNAP nanowires onto plastic substrates.
Figure 2: Scanning electron micrographs of the SNAP nanowires on plastic.
Figure 3: Electrical characterization of nanowire TFTs on plastic.
Figure 4: Ultrasensitive detection with nanowire-on-plastic gas sensors.
Figure 5: Characterization of a ‘nano-electronic nose’ nanowire sensor library on plastic.

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Acknowledgements

We thank W. Dichtel, A. Boukai and Y. Bunimovich for useful discussions. M.C.M. thanks the Intelligence Community Postdoctoral Research Fellowship Program for financial support. J.R.H. acknowledges primary support of this work via a contract from the MITRE Corporation, and support from the National Cancer Institute (#5U54 CA119347).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA

    Michael C. McAlpine, Habib Ahmad, Dunwei Wang & James R. Heath

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  1. Michael C. McAlpine
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  2. Habib Ahmad
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M.C.M. and J.R.H. conceived the experiments, M.C.M. carried out the experiments and M.C.M., H.A. and D.W. designed the experiments.

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Correspondence to James R. Heath.

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McAlpine, M., Ahmad, H., Wang, D. et al. Highly ordered nanowire arrays on plastic substrates for ultrasensitive flexible chemical sensors. Nature Mater 6, 379–384 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat1891

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