Affinity driven ion exchange EG-OFET sensor for high selectivity and low limit of detection of cesium in seawater
The detection and quantification of cesium in aquatic environments are environmental safety and public health issues, which have been limited until now by the lack of fast, low-cost, low detection limit and selective analytical tools.
In this work we introduce a new organic electrolytic gate field effect transistor sensor for the detection of Cs+ in seawater, based on the combination of two ultrathin layers, namely poly(3-hexylthiophene) as organic semiconductor and a lipid monolayer as dielectric. The latter is capped by a Cs+ probe made of a calix[4]arene ether-crown, a molecule already reported in the literature with a good affinity for Cs+.
We demonstrate here, that by controlling the ion exchange of the guest/host complexes by affinity, it is possible to solve the general selectivity problem encountered in all ion sensors based on field effect transistors, by achieving a perfect selectivity even in very complex analytical solutions such as seawater.
We also show that the combination of an ultra-thin transistor structure with a dense molecular organization of the probes allows to reach a detection limit below the femtomolar, i.e. at a limit five times lower than ICP-MS, the most commonly used technique today.
These results open the way to a generalized monitoring of Cs+ in complex analytes.
This research carried out as part of the SENCEI project, a collaborative project between the PIV and IMMF departments of CINaM, LPMC in Palaiseau and NIMS in Tsukuba (Japan), was funded by the International Collaborative Research Program (SICORP) supported by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and the French National Research Agency (ANR) under project N◦ANR-16-JTIC-0003-01.
Ref.: Sensors & Actuators: B. Chemical 351 (2022) 130956
Affinity driven ion exchange EG-OFET sensor for high selectivity and low limit of detection of cesium in seawater
Authors: Tin Phan Nguy, Volkan Kilinc, Ryoma Hayakawa, Catherine Henry-de-Villeneuve, Jean-Manuel Raimundo, Yutaka Wakayama, Anne Charrier
More information: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.snb.2021.130956
