Organic semiconductors, distinguished by their intrinsically chemical versatility, solution processibility and mechanical flexibility, offer an excellent platform for the application for organic field-effect transistors (OFETs), solar cells, thermoelectrics, chem-/biosensors and electronic skins. OFETs based chemical sensing has been widely used in the detection of humidity, ammonia, sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide etc., due to their portability, ability for high-throughput manufacturing and unique electric properties. However, OFET-based chemical sensors are rarely applied to personalized health and environmental monitoring via detection of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), due to the stringent requirements of ultrahigh sensitivity (ppb level), rapid response and resilience to temperature and humidity fluctuations.<br/>In this work, we develop printed nanoporous OFETs to address this challenge. This approach yields nanopores with tunable pores size (50 nm-700 nm) in the semiconductor thin film via simple solution processing. Introducing nanopores grants direct access to the highly reactive sites otherwise buried in the conductive channel, thereby imparting ultra-sensitivity to analytes. Using this strategy, we obtain unprecedented ultrasensitive, ultrafast chemical sensing to VOCs down to the 1 ppb level at hundred-millisecond time scale, which opens up a wide range of applications in personalized health and environmental monitoring. We further demonstrate flexible sensor chip for real-time monitoring of breath ammonia-a potential biomarker for chronic kidney disease, Alzheimer's disease etc.

Solution-processed nanoporous organic semiconductor thin films for health and environmental monitoring

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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