A Review on Use of Nanomaterials in FETs for Sensing Applications

Monitoring any phenomenon, be it physical or chemical, demands accurate quantification and that is where the wide variety of sensors comes into the picture. Electrical sensors are by far, the most superior among all of them. In particular, the Field effect transistors (FETs) are at the heart of any electronic integrated circuit. However, since its introduction, it has been implemented for a plethora of sensing applications, ranging from gas sensing to bio-sensing. In comparison to a resistive device configuration, the FET in itself has the advantage of an extra electrode, the gate. In one end, it gives extra control over the device and on the other, sensing through multiple parameters like current and threshold voltage, among others. The advent of nanotechnology empowered by the novel properties of the nanomaterials have opened up new horizons of research perhaps in every fields of science and technology. While the materials provide a selective nature to the sensors, the ‘nano’ dimension presents a large surface area to volume ratio. These features are very effective either as the active transducer or as the harbor for immobilizing the relevant sensing elements. Although the conjugation of FET and nano-materials have attracted a lot of research in the recent times, but a comprehensive study is necessary in this direction. In view of that, the present study discusses the existing chemical and bio-sensors, which have been implemented on the FET platform embedded with the efficacies of nanoscience and nanotechnology.