Tunable Reverse-Biased Graphene/Silicon Heterojunction Schottky Diode Sensor

A new chemical sensor based on reverse-biased graphene/Si heterojunction diode has been developed that exhibits extremely high bias-dependent molecular detection sensitivity and low operating power. The device takes advantage of graphene's atomically thin nature, which enables molecular adsorption on its surface to directly alter graphene/Si interface barrier height, thus affecting the junction current exponentially when operated in reverse bias and resulting in ultrahigh sensitivity. By operating the device in reverse bias, the work function of graphene, and hence the barrier height at the graphene/Si heterointerface, can be controlled by the bias magnitude, leading to a wide tunability of the molecular detection sensitivity. Such sensitivity control is also possible by carefully selecting the graphene/Si heterojunction Schottky barrier height. Compared to a conventional graphene amperometric sensor fabricated on the same chip, the proposed sensor demonstrated 13 times higher sensitivity for NO2 and 3 times higher for NH3 in ambient conditions, while consuming approximate to 500 times less power for same magnitude of applied voltage bias. The sensing mechanism based on heterojunction Schottky barrier height change has been confirmed using capacitance-voltage measurements.