Graphene field-effect transistor application for flow sensing

Abstract

Microflow sensors offer great potential for applications in microfluidics and lab-on-A-chip systems. However, thermal-based sensors, which are commonly used in modern flow sensing technology, are mainly made of materials with positive temperature coefficients (PTC) and suffer from a self-heating effect and slow response time. Therefore, the design of novel devices and careful selection of materials are required to improve the overall flow sensor performance. In this work we propose graphene field-effect transistor (GFET) to be used as microflow sensor. Temperature distribution in graphene channel was simulated and the analysis of heat convection was performed to establish the relation between the fluidic flow velocity and the temperature gradient. It was shown that the negative temperature coefficient (NTC) of graphene could enable the self-protection of the device and should minimize sensing error from currentinduced heating. It was also argued that the planar design of the GFET sensor makes it suitable for the real application due to supposed mechanical stability of such a construction.