Transistor‐Based Work Function Measurement of Metal‐Organic Frameworks for Ultra‐Low‐Power, Rationally Designed Chemical Sensors

Abstract: 

A classic challenge in chemical sensing is selectivity. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are an exciting class of materials because they can be tuned for selective chemical adsorption. Adsorption events trigger work-function shifts, which can be detected with a chemical-sensitive field-effect transistor (power ≈microwatts). In this work, several case studies were used towards generalizing the sensing mechanism, ultimately towards our metal-centric hypothesis. HKUST-1 was used as a proof-of-principle humidity sensor. The response is thickness independent, meaning the response is surface localized. ZIF-8 is demonstrated to be an NO2 -sensing material, and the response is dominated by adsorption at metal sites. Finally, MFM-300(In) shows how standard hard-soft acid-base theory can be used to qualitatively predict sensor responses. This paper sets the groundwork for using the tunability of metal-organic frameworks for chemical sensing with distributed, scalable devices.

Author: 
Publication date: 
July 23, 2019
Publication type: 
Journal Article
Citation: 
D. W. Gardner, X. Gao, H. M. Fahad, A. T. Yang, S. He, A. Javey, C. Carraro, and R. Maboudian, “Transistor‐Based work‐function measurement of METAL–ORGANIC frameworks for ULTRA‐LOW‐POWER, rationally designed chemical sensors,” Chemistry – A European Journal, vol. 25, no. 57, pp. 13176–13183, 2019.

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