Effect of Post Deposition Annealing Process on the pH Sensitivity of Spin-Coated Titanium Dioxide Thin Film

This paper presents an investigation on titanium dioxide (TiO2) thin film, which is used as sensing membrane for Extended-Gate Field Effect Transistor (EGFET) for pH sensing application. TiO2 thin films were deposited using sol-gel spin coating method on indium tin oxide (ITO) substrates. After the deposition, the thin films were annealed at 300 °C for 10 and 15 min, while another sample was annealed at 400 °C for 15 min. The sensitivity measurement was taken using the EGFET setup equipment with constant-current (100 μA) and constant-voltage (0.5 V) biasing interfacing circuit. TiO2 thin film as the pH-sensitive membrane and the working electrode was connected to a commercial metal-oxide semiconductor FET (MOSFET). The MOSFET then was connected to the interfacing circuit. The sensitivity of the TiO2 thin film towards pH buffer solution was measured by dipping the sensing membrane in pH4, pH7 and pH10 buffer solution. For comparison, a sample of bare-ITO was also tested to see its sensitivity. We found that the TiO2 thin film annealed at 400 °C for 15 min gave the highest sensitivity compared to other annealing conditions and also compared to the bare ITO substrate with the value of 44.30 mV/pH. This showed that TiO2 thin film can be used for pH sensing and the post-deposition treatment of the thin film can influence the sensing ability. We also measured the TiO2 thin films’ current – voltage (I-V) characteristics. Relating the I-V characteristic of the thin films and sensitivity, the sensing membrane with higher conductivity gave better sensitivity.