Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

This research program aims to advance both the fundamental and applied study of electroactive nanostructured graphene devices for chemical and biological sensing applications. Graphene is a truly two-dimensional semi-metallic material in which electrons can move without scattering for several hundred nanometers even at room temperature, and more importantly, it is very sensitive to the local environment. The core of this research program will be based on the investigation of the electrical (conductance) responses of chemical and biological sensors made from receptor sites wired between graphene electrodes, and from physically adsorbed receptors on graphene flakes. The electrical response curves of these sensors will be measured using a cryogenic micro-manipulated probe station that can operate over a temperature range from 4 to 400 K under a controlled environment and for which funds are requested in this grant application. Precisely, during our hierarchical device construction, current-voltage curves will be obtained for each step of the fabrication process (chemical cap wiring, labeled site-target binding, and control experiments). Such a probe will also be the basis of our detection scheme. In addition, nanofabrication methods will be used for our fabrication of nanostructured graphene-based sensors. The resulting sensors will be studied using electrical transport, surface sensitive techniques and proximal probes. The proposed work will combine elements of organic chemistry, molecular biology, condensed-matter physics, nanomaterial science, and spectroscopy. The results of this research will further the development of new detection methods based on nanostructured materials.