Nanotechnology to Enhance Charge Transfer

This chapter is the third chapter of this book that deals with nanotechnology. Similar to the previous chapter, nanotechnology is again proposed here to improve the performance of Bio/Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) interfaces. However, this time, the aim is reached by enhancing the electron transfer at the interface. The reason is that this chapter targets amperometric biosensing. Therefore, several techniques have been developed to enhance the probability of electron transfer between chemicals in solution and working electrodes as much as possible. In particular, the chapter proposes using carbon nanotubes as extremely good materials to improve the sensing performance of the Bio/CMOS interface. In particular, the physics of electron transfer with carbon nanotubes is described, several effects due to the presence of carbon nanotubes in the interface are discussed, and different approaches for integrating them in CMOS devices are also presented. To show the efficacy of those different approaches, the electrical properties of the resulting Bio/CMOS interfaces are deeply investigated with respect to their morphology at the nanoscale. The use of noble metals (e.g., platinum) for nanostructuring Bio/CMOS amperometric interfaces is briefly introduced as well.