posted on 2023-11-15, 17:13authored byBenjamin Barnes, Ziyi Wang, Ayman Alibrahim, Qinglin Lin, Xiaojian Wu, YuHuang Wang
Aligned and suspended carbon nanotubes
can outperform
randomly
oriented networks in electronic biosensing and thin-film electronics.
However, carbon nanotubes tend to bundle and form random networks.
Here, we show that carbon nanotubes spontaneously align in an ammonium
deoxycholate surfactant gel even under low shear forces, allowing
direct writing and printing of nanotubes into electrically conducting
wires and aligned thin layers across trenches. To demonstrate its
application potential, we directly printed arrays of disposable electrical
biosensors, which show femtomolar sensitivity in the detection of
DNA and SARS-CoV-2 RNA.