Amino monolayer modified nanowire array for trinitrotoluene detection

In this paper, we reported a homemade silicon chemical sensor of arranged silicon nanowires for the detection of 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (TNT) explosive, where the key sensor structure surface has been successfully modified into an amino monolayer with (3-aminopropyl)-dimethylethoxysilane (APDMES) through molecular oligomerization in a self-assembled manner. The sensor can easily and rapidly detect both TNT dissolved in the liquid phase from 5 fM to 50 pM and TNT vapor in air approximately at about 1 ppb. More importantly, the sensors showed a rather lower response sensitivity to several TNT analogs than to TNT.