High-Performance and novel photoactive Hetrostructured Field effect transistor for non-enzymatic glucose sensing

Abstract

Field Effect Transistor (FET) is emerging as a next generation biosensor possessing the potential to adapt to diverse nanostructures while providing a stable and economically practical platform for achieving high sensitivity and selectivity for the analyte detection. Herein, the study demonstrates the application of an effective g-C3N4 and BiVO4 based photoactive hetrostructures to develop a high performance, non-enzymatic glucose sensing field effect transistor. g-C3N4 nanosheets were synthesized by thermal oxidation of thiourea which were sequentially used for carbon doping to fabricate heterostructures with BiVO4 using Carbon nanotubes (CNT) and gold (Au) nanoparticles as mediators for electrons. Four different hetrostructures BiVO4/g-C3N4, g-C3N4/CNT/BiVO4 g-C3N4/CNT/Au/BiVO4 and C-doped g-C3N4/CNT/Au/BiVO4 were fabricated for channel region to be utilized in FET. The fabricated channels were assessed for improvement g-C3N4/BiVO4 in absorbance, reduction in recombination losses by decreased energy band gap and current–voltage variation. The morphological and structural analysis was confirmed by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Transmission electron Microscopy (TEM). Current- Voltage (IV) analysis of the fabricated channels was compared for the same amount of glucose concentration. The fabricated C-doped g-C3N4/CNT/Au/BiVO4 channel region based FET demonstrated long term stability after multiple uses, excellent sensitivity and enhanced photocatalytic performance. It also proved to be greatly beneficial in terms of ease of production, simplicity of usage and small size. It has the potential to recreate portable glucose biosensors for real time sensing while also providing additional benefit of other sensing biomolecules.