Gold-coated graphene field-effect transistors for quantitative analysis of protein-antibody interactions

Field-effect transistors (FETs) based on large-area graphene and other 2D materials can potentially be used as low-cost and flexible potentiometric biological sensors. However, there have been few attempts to use these devices for quantifying molecular interactions and to compare their performance to established sensor technology. Here, gold-coated graphene FETs are used to measure the binding affinity of a specific protein-antibody interaction. Having a gold surface gives access to well-known thiol chemistry for the self-assembly of linker molecules. The results are compared with potentiometric silicon-based extended-gate sensors and a surface plasmon resonance system. The estimated dissociation constants are in excellent agreement for all sensor types as long as the active surfaces are the same (gold). The role of the graphene transducer is to simply amplify surface potential changes caused by adsorption of molecules on the gold surface.