Photo-Enhanced Chemo-Transistor Platform for Ultrasensitive Assay of Small Molecules

• DOI: 10.1021/jacs.2c13655
• Publication Date: 2023-04-25T16:09:56Z
• Authors: Qiankun Wang; Zhaolin Ai; Qianying Guo; Xuejun Wang; Changhao Dai; Hancheng Wang; Jiang Sun; Yanan Tang; Dingding Jiang; Xinjie Pei; Renzhong Chen; Jian Gou; Lin Yu; Jiandong Ding; Andrew T. S. Wee; Yunqi Liu; Dacheng Wei
• Keywords: Photocurrent

Compared with traditional assay techniques, field-effect transistors (FETs) have advantages such as fast response, high sensitivity, being label-free, and point-of-care detection, while lacking generality to detect a wide range of small molecules since most them are electrically neutral weak doping effect. Here, we demonstrate photo-enhanced chemo-transistor platform based on synergistic photo-chemical gating effect in order overcome the aforementioned limitation. Under light irradiation, accumulated photoelectrons generated from covalent organic frameworks offer photo-gating modulation, amplifying response molecule adsorption including methylglyoxal, p-nitroaniline, nitrobenzene, aniline, glyoxal when measuring photocurrent. We perform testing buffer, artificial urine, sweat, saliva, diabetic mouse serum. The limit detection is down 10-19 M about 5 orders magnitude lower than existing technologies. This work develops FET or other species enhanced sensitivity for applications fields biochemical research, health monitoring, disease diagnosis.