Graphene and other 2D materials present great opportunities for developing novel nanoscale sensors and electronics due to their outstanding material properties. Our research in this area is focused on harnessing some of these unique properties to develop next generation electronics and sensors with potential applications in chemical, biological and environmental sensing. The sub-focus areas within this major focus area are listed below:

(i) Graphene heterojunctions based electronics and sensors:

 Due to its unique material properties Graphene forms interesting heterojunctions with other 2D and 3D materials that can be exploited to develop novel electronic devices and sensors. NESL is pursuing the development of sensors and electronics using graphene heterojunctions as building blocks. NESL has pioneered the concept of “chemidiode” type sensors where a reverse biased graphene/Si heterojunction was used to perform sensing with orders of magnitude higher sensitivity and lower power consumption compared to traditional chemiresistor sensors. Various chemical and biological sensing applications of the chemidiode sensor are being pursued.

(ii) 2D materials based NEMS and self-powered flexible electronics and sensors:

The flexible nature and extraordinary electronic properties of graphene and other 2D materials makes them highly promising for designing nanoelectrmechnaical systems (NEMS) and flexible electronics/sensors with multi-functionality and ultra-high performance. NESL is investigating various 2D material/polymer composites for realizing NEMS sensors, self-powered flexible electronics and bio-implantable sensors for various physiological analytes and bio-markers.

A suspended graphene bridge on patterned SiO2 ridges on Si substrate