Investigation of Sensitive Structures of Nanostructured Silicon – Melanin

The goal of this work is to study the current-voltage characteristics of structures of porous silicon – melanin and sensitivity of structures to glucose, to compare the characteristics between the samples obtained by different techniques. Object of study – structures of porous silicon – melanin.  The subject of the study is the change of electrophysical parameters depending on the change in the analyte concentration. Organic-inorganic structures have recently attracted considerable interest in electronics due to the ability to create cheaper and simpler devices than traditional inorganic semiconductors. Melanin is an organic pigment that is present in many living organisms and has semiconductor properties. Melanin interacts with most biological substances, making it a promising material in the field of biosensors. Measuring glucose levels in the world today is very popular in the health and food sectors, so there is a constant need for easy-to-use and low-cost sensors. The purpose of this work was to investigate the heterojunction of melanin-porous silicon and the possibility of creating glucose sensors on such structures. For sample preparation metal-assisted chemical etching with three different types of metal nanoparticles (silver, copper, gold) was used. This technique allow formation of arrays of silicon nanowires with high aspect ratio. After porous silicon etching metal residuals were removed and thin layer of water-solube melanin was deposited at the surface and polymerized. Silver-based dot contacts was used for measurements. The I-V curves of the studied samples were measured in the work, such parameters as: resistance of structure, coefficient of rectification at contact of porous silicon – melanin, coefficient of rectification at contact of substrate – melanin, sensitivity to glucose were calculated. It was shown that I-V curves of both melanin/porous silicon and melanin/porous silicon/bulk silicon structures are diode-like with rectification factor at 5 V up to 80 for melanin/porous silicon heterojunction and up to 800 for melanin/porous silicon/bulk silicon structure. Resistor-like sencitive structures of melanin – nanostructured silicon are sensitive to glucose with a sensitivity coefficient of up to 1.83 mA /%. It was noticed that samples prepared with copper nanoparticles have opposite dependence (decreasing of current with increase of glucose concentration). No clear correlation was observed between the sensitivity, the rectifying properties and the technology of sample preparation, but the most stable results were obtained for structures made with silver nanoparticles.