High-sensitivity ion detection at low voltages with current-driven organic electrochemical transistors

• DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-03932-3
• Publication Date: 2018-04-11T14:25:02Z
• Authors: Matteo Ghittorelli; Leona Lingstedt; Paolo Romele; N. Irina Crăciun; Zsolt Miklós Ková...; Paul W. M. Blom; Fabrizio Torricelli
• Keywords: Bioelectronics

Abstract Ions dissolved in aqueous media play a fundamental role plants, animals, and humans. Therefore, the situ quantification of ion concentration is gathering relevant interest several fields including biomedical diagnostics, environmental monitoring, healthcare products, water food test control, agriculture industry security. The limitation state-of-art transistor-based approaches intrinsic trade-off between sensitivity, range operating voltage. Here we show current-driven configuration based on organic electrochemical transistors that overcomes this limit. measured sensitivity exceeds by one order magnitude Nernst limit at an voltage few hundred millivolts. normalized to supply larger than 1200 mV V −1 dec , which largest value ever reported for ion-sensitive transistors. proposed approach general can be extended any transistor technology, thus opening opportunities high-performance bioelectronics.