We present the research results of the use of plasma modification for the fabrication of carbon nanotube-based devices for chemical and biological sensing. The oxygen plasma treatment of multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) effectively grafts oxygen atoms onto the CNT surface. For investigating the impact of plasma modification on the MWCNT-based sensor performance, three different sensors are fabricated: NH3 gas sensors, humidity sensors, and immunosensors. The plasma-modified MWCNTs (p-MWCNTs) exhibit a sensitivity to NH3 that is approximately twice that of the corresponding untreated sensor. The humidity sensor with a p-MWCNT top electrode exhibits a much faster response time compared with the untreated MWCNT electrodes. The p-MWCNT immunosensor exhibits a detection limit almost 1000 times lower than that of the standard ELISA assay, while the untreated MWCNTs exhibit no detectable signal. These results imply that the oxygen-containing functional groups on the CNT surface significantly affect the performance of the CNT-based chemical and biological sensors.

We report on the effect of oxygen plasma treatment on the performance of single-wall carbon nanotube (SWCNT) NH 3 gas sensors with different semiconducting contents (66% and 90% semiconducting SWCNTs). The performance of chemical sensors based on SWCNT networks depends on the concentration of semiconducting SWCNTs (s-SWCNTs), whose conductance can be significantly modulated by the absorbed molecules and the surface functionalization. After oxygen plasma treatment, the 66% s-SWCNT sample showed an increase in sensitivity from 0.0275%/ppm to 0.1525%/ppm (5.5 times), while the 90% s-SWCNT device demonstrated an increase in sensitivity from 0.1184%/ppm to 1.5707%/ppm (13 times). These results correspond to improvements in sensitivity of 57 times and 10 times compared with pristine and plasma-treated 66% s-SWCNT samples, respectively. In addition, the plasma-treated sensors exhibited much faster response and recovery times than the pristine one. The large improvement in performance was explained by the presence of oxygen-containing functional groups and the sp 2 -sp 3 structure change of SWCNTs, which changes the binding energy while increasing the uptake of polar molecules such as NH 3 .

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