Narrower Nanoribbon Biosensors Fabricated by Chemical Lift-off Lithography Show Higher Sensitivity.

Zhao, Chuanzhen; Liu, Qingzhou; Cheung, Kevin M; Liu, Wenfei; Yang, Qing; Xu, Xiaobin; Man, Tianxing; Weiss, Paul S; Zhou, Chongwu; Andrews, Anne M

Wafer-scale nanoribbon field-effect transistor (FET) biosensors fabricated by straightforward top-down processes are demonstrated as sensing platforms with high sensitivity to a broad range of biological targets. Nanoribbons with 350 nm widths (700 nm pitch) were patterned by chemical lift-off lithography using high-throughput, low-cost commercial digital versatile disks (DVDs) as masters. Lift-off lithography was also used to pattern ribbons with 2 μm or 20 μm widths (4 or 40 μm pitches, respectively) using masters fabricated by photolithography. For all widths, highly aligned, quasi-one-dimensional (1D) ribbon arrays were produced over centimeter length scales by sputtering to deposit 20 nm thin-film In2O3 as the semiconductor. Compared to 20 μm wide microribbons, FET sensors with 350 nm wide nanoribbons showed higher sensitivity to pH over a broad range (pH 5 to 10). Nanoribbon FETs functionalized with a serotonin-specific aptamer demonstrated larger responses to equimolar serotonin in high ionic strength buffer than those of microribbon FETs. Field-effect transistors with 350 nm wide nanoribbons functionalized with single-stranded DNA showed greater sensitivity to detecting complementary DNA hybridization vs 20 μm microribbon FETs. In all, we illustrate facile fabrication and use of large-area, uniform In2O3 nanoribbon FETs for ion, small-molecule, and oligonucleotide detection where higher surface-to-volume ratios translate to better detection sensitivities.