Design of Nanocarbon Electronic Devices for Single-Molecule Measurements

With the miniaturization of electronics, it is now possible to assemble field-effect transistors (FET) with single-molecule components as channel or gate. Single-molecule FETs have been recently used to study different fundamental mechanisms at the individual molecule scale, such as charge transport, folding and chemical reactions, both for small molecules and complex biological macromolecules. Here, our goal is to use nanocarbon materials (graphene or carbon nanotubes) to design and fabricate FET architectures suitable for single-molecule measurements. First, we report the fabrication of large arrays of FET devices with similar electrical characteristics, built from long carbon nanotubes or large-area graphene synthesized by chemical vapor deposition (CVD).Second, we used electron-beam lithography to pattern high-resolution features (20nm), in order to design nanoconstrictions in the graphene channel, as well as nanofluidic cavities allowing for single-point reaction chemistry. We will present the electrical characteristics of these devices, as well as high-resolution imaging using scanning electron and atomic force microscopy (SEM/AFM). Finally, we will discuss future work in terms of single-molecule functionalization with biological molecules.