Selective gas sensing with a single graphene-on-silicon transistor

The low-frequency 1/f noise in graphene transistors has been studied extensively owing to the proposed graphene applications in analog devices and communication systems [1-5]. The studies were motivated by the fact that the low-frequency noise can be up-converted by device nonlinearity and contribute to the phase noise of the system. Similarly, the sensor sensitivity is often limited by the electronic low-frequency noise. Therefore, noise is usually considered as one of the main limiting factors for the device or overall system operation. However, the electronic noise spectrum itself can be used as a sensing parameter increasing the sensor sensitivity and selectivity. Here, we show that vapors of different chemicals produce distinguishably different effects on the low-frequency noise spectra of the graphene-on-Si transistor. Our study showed that some gases change the electrical resistance of pristine graphene devices without changing their low-frequency noise spectra while other gases modify the noise spectra by inducing Lorentzian components with distinctive features. The characteristic corner frequency fC of the Lorentzian noise bulges in graphene devices is different for different chemicals and varies from fC=10 - 20 Hz for tetrahydrofuran to fC=1300 - 1600 Hz for chloroform. We tested the selected set of chemicals vapors on different graphene device samples and alternated different vapors for the same samples. The obtained results indicate that 1/f noise in combination with other sensing parameters can allow one to achieve the selective gas sensing with a single pristine graphene transistor. Our method of gas sensing with graphene does not require graphene surface functionalization or fabrication of an array of the devices with each tuned to a certain chemical. The observation of the Lorentzian components in the vapor-exposed graphene can also help in developing an accurate theoretical description of the noise mechanism in graphene.