Effect of solution pH and adsorbent concentration on the sensing parameters of TGN-based electrochemical sensor

The response of trilayer graphene nanoribbon (TGN)-based ion-sensitive field-effect transistor (ISFET) to different pH solutions and adsorption effect on the sensing parameters are analytically studied in this research. The authors propose a TGN-based sensor to electrochemically detect pH. To this end, absorption effect on the sensing area in the form of carrier concentration, carrier velocity, and conductance variations are investigated. Also, the caused electrical response on TGN as a detection element is analytically proposed, in which significant current decrease of the sensor is observed after exposure to high pH values. In order to verify the accuracy of the model, it is compared with recent reports on pH sensors. The TGN-based pH sensor exposes higher current compared to that of carbon nanotube (CNT) counterpart for analogous ambient conditions. While, the comparative results demonstrate that the conductance of proposed model is lower than that of monolayer graphene-counterpart for equivalent pH values. The results confirm that the conductance of the sensor is decreased and Vg-min is obviously right-shifted by increasing value of pH. The authors demonstrate that although there is not the experimental evidence reported in the part of literature for TGN sensor, but the model can assist in comprehending experiments involving nanoscale pH sensors.