Gas sensing characteristics of single-walled carbon nanotube (SWNT) devices decorated with single-stranded RNA (ss-RNA) were studied. Our results showed that RNA decoration could significantly improve the magnitude of SWNTs' response to methanol and IPA vapors. Furthermore, the sensing characteristics of various RNA functionalized SWNT devices were highly sequence dependent. Specifically, for homo RNA decorated SWNTs, the sensing response followed the trend: C > G > U > A for methanol and G > C > U > A for IPA. For repeated RNA base coated SWNTs, the sensing response trend was: GU > AG > AC > CU for methanol and GU > AC > AG > CU for IPA. These findings provided insight to the binding affinities of RNA oligomers on SWNTs and further paved the way to control the sensing specificity of RNA functionalized SWNT sensors for chemical and biological applications.

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