An all-solid-state AlGaN/GaN based ion-sensitive heterostructure field effect transistor (ISHFET) pH sensor was fabricated by integrating a noble metal (Au) quasi-reference electrode to improve the device stability when measuring the pH value of a small aqueous volume. In this paper, the influence of the size of the quasi-reference electrode against the stability of the pH readings was investigated. Through optimizing the size of the integrated quasi-reference electrode, the all-solid-state ISHFET pH sensor can sustain stable pH measurements for aqueous solutions of micro-litre size. A sensitivity of 55 mV/pH was achieved by the pH sensor at room temperature. Thus, the device may have potential uses in biomedical applications which require small volume pH measurements.

We demonstrate the enhancement of emission of InGaN/GaN multiple-quantum-well nanorods by nearly a factor of 2 by coupling them to localized surface plasmons of Au nano-particles (NPs). The Au NPs are fabricated in situ on the nanorods using a Ni/SiO2/Au/SiNx compound functional layer. This layer serves as a combination dry-etch mask for fabricating the nanorods and the Au NPs, as well as providing isolation necessary to prevent fluorescence quenching. Time-resolved photoluminescence measurements confirm that emission enhancement originates from the coupling.

Ion-sensitive field effect transistor (ISFET) has been widely used as a pH sensor. Its sensitivity can be expressed in terms of current or voltage which were defined by us as SA and SV in this article. Using current to represent sensitivity is more convenient for it can simplify the subsequent circuits. What’s more, SA contains more information including the geometry of the device, the parameter of the epitaxial material and the property of the sensitive membrane while SV only contains the information of the sensitive membrane, which helps us to analyze the device performance. In this paper, the sensitivity SA was deduced theoretically based on the previous research and was verified experimentally. On this basis, we put forward a method that can separate the effect of the sensitive membrane on the sensitivity from the material completely by designing a series of AlGaN/GaN based heterostructure ISFET pH sensors with different sizes of the channel area (width/length parameter). Experimental result shows the importance of this method in the future research.

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