Atomistic Simulation of a New Label-Free DNA Nanosensor Based on Ballistic Carbon Nanotube Field-Effect Transistor

Abstract

In this paper, a new label-free nanobiosensor called dielectric-modulated carbon nanotube field-effect transistor (DM CNTFET) is proposed. The nanobiosensor is simulated using an atomistic simulation based on the non-equilibrium Green's function (NEGF) formalism. The main sensing mechanism is based on the dielectric modulation technique. The threshold voltage shift is considered as a biosensing metric. The investigation includes the potential and charge distributions, the transfer and output characteristics, and the sensitivity behavior. The performance assessment reveals that the proposed nanoscale DM CNTFET-based biosensor is effective and can be considered as a promising candidate for high-performance biosensing applications. The proposed label-free DM CNTFET-based nanosensor can be used to detect other bio-measurands such as the antigens and antibodies, which also are adaptable with the dielectric modulation sensing approach.