Carbon-Based Nanomaterials in Sensors for Food Safety

Abstract

Food safety is one of the most important and widespread research topics worldwide. The development of relevant analytical methods or devices for detection of unsafe factors in foods is necessary to ensure food safety and an important aspect of the studies of food safety. In recent years, developing high-performance sensors used for food safety analysis has made remarkable progress. The combination of carbon-based nanomaterials with excellent properties is a specific type of sensor for enhancing the signal conversion and thus improving detection accuracy and sensitivity, thus reaching unprecedented levels and having good application potential. This review describes the roles and contributions of typical carbon-based nanomaterials, such as mesoporous carbon, single-or multi-walled carbon nanotubes, graphene and carbon quantum dots, in the construction and performance improvement of various chemo-and biosensors for various signals. Additionally, this review focuses on the progress of applications of this type of sensor in food safety inspection, especially for the analysis and detection of all types of toxic and harmful substances in foods.

Microwave-Assisted Synthesis and Characterization of Poly(L-lysine)-Based Polymer/Carbon Quantum Dot Nanomaterials for Biomedical Purposes

“…Thanks to the presence of hetermoatoms such as nitrogen, it may be assumed that the obtained nanomaterials will be characterized by very good luminescence properties [27]. The presence of hydrophilic functional groups, such as NH 2 and COOH, is responsible for excellent water solubility comparing to traditional fluorescent organic dyes [4,21,22,23,24,25].…”

“…The use of fluorescent microscope may lead to the formation of the reactive oxygen species (ROS) which leads to cells apoptosis. Therefore, the antioxidant activity of the fluorescent dye used is a desired feature [21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28].…”

Noble Metal Nanostructured Materials for Chemical and Biosensing Systems

“…Nanomaterials, also known as nanostructured materials, generally refer to nanocomposites assembled in a three-dimensional structure with at least one dimension in the nanometer size range (0.1-100 nm) or nanostructured materials as basic constituent units [1,2]. This kind of materials usually has large specific surface area, controlled surface activity, special quantum size effect, surface/interface effect, macroscopic quantum tunneling effect, photoelectric effect, catalytic effect and volume effect [3,4]. These unique properties have given nanostructured materials excellent optical, electrical, magnetic and other characteristics, making these materials widely concerned in various research fields [5][6][7].…”

“…This kind of materials combined the special physical and chemical properties of noble metals with nanomaterials to exhibit superior performance, expanding the application range of nanomaterials. It mainly covers several aspects as follows: (1) as a highly efficient catalytic material [11,12]; (2) as a highly conductive material in the sensing field [13]; (3) with large specific surface area for energy storage [14,15]; (4) introduced into a multi-metal composite material [16,17]. To date, a large number of noble metal nanomaterials with different morphologies (balls, rods, flowers, sheets, cages, etc.)…”

Characterization and Electrical Properties of PVA Films with Self-Assembled Chitosan-AuNPs/SWCNT-COOH Nanostructures

“…In addition, they have quite an ample surface area, higher chemical stability, high mechanical and thermal properties and great capacities of adsorption and electric conductivity [ 8 , 17 , 18 , 19 ]. AuNPs have been deposited into CNT to form nanostructured compounds, which can be used as electrodes, catalysts and sensors [ 20 ]. Nanocomposites based on decorative multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNT)-AuNPs encapsulated in a polymeric matrix improve the stability, reproducibility and sensitivity [ 21 ].…”