Hysteresis contributions to the apparent gate pulse refreshing of carbon nanotube based sensors.

We have fabricated back-gated carbon nanotube (CNT) field effect transistors (FET) and used them to sense NH(3) (ammonia) gas. After observing the long time required for the sensor to recover after being exposed to NH(3), we attempted to accelerate the sensor recovery by pulsing the gate electrode for a period of time at an appropriate bias. We have found that most, if not all, of the apparent sensor refreshing due to the gate pulse is actually a measurement artifact resulting from device hysteresis.