Conducting‐Polymer Nanomaterials for High‐Performance Sensor Applications: Issues and Challenges

Abstract

Owing to their promising applications in electronic and optoelectronic devices, conducting polymers have been continuously studied during the past few decades. Nevertheless, only limited progress had been made in conducting‐polymer‐based sensors until nanostructured conducting polymers were demonstrated for high‐performance signal transducers. Significant advances in the synthesis of conducting‐polymer nanomaterials have been recently reported, with enhanced sensitivity relative to their bulk counterparts. Today, conducting‐polymer nanomaterials rival metal and inorganic semiconductor nanomaterials in sensing capability. However, there are still several technological challenges to be solved for practical sensor applications of conducting‐polymer nanomaterials. Here, the key issues on conducting‐polymer nanomaterials in the development of state‐of‐the‐art sensors are discussed. Furthermore, a perspective on next‐generation sensor technology from a materials point of view is also given.

Functionalized polypyrrole nanotube arrays as electrochemical biosensor for the determination of copper ions

“…The overoxidized PPy NW layer was formed by one step pyrrole electropolymerization in the presence of sodium carbonate [5]. A biosensor based on enzyme functionalized poly(pyrrole-3-carboxylic acid) NTs which were immobilized onto a microelectrode substrate via covalent linkages was developed by Jang and co-workers [3]. However, to the best of our knowledge, no electrochemical biosensors have been reported based on peptide modified PPy NT arrays electrodes.…”

“…Due to its environmental stability, good biocompatibility and high electronic conductivity, CP nanomaterials have attracted great attention in the fabrication of chemical and biosensors [2]. The strategies for CP nanomaterials to obtain highly sensitive and specific responses focus on the integration with various micro-analytical systems and coupling with chemical/biological species [3]. Especially, the functionalized CP nanowires (NW) and nanotubes (NT) are predicted to be excellent sensing materials relating with their features of high surface areas, porous structure, abundant surface functionalities, and sensitive electron transduction [4].…”

Progress in Research of Flexible MEMS Microelectrodes for Neural Interface

“…Appeared to attract widespread attention, conducting polymer possesses various distinctive characteristics including high charge storage capacity, low impedance, excellent plasticity, volume electrostrictive effect [42][43][44]. Meanwhile, conducting polymers with good biocompatibility is widely applied in biomedical area such as biomedical imaging [45], biosensor [46,47], artificial muscle [48], drug release controller [49], cancer biomarker [50] and neural interface [51,52].…”

Recent Advances in Nanostructured Conducting Polymers: from Synthesis to Practical Applications

“…A great deal of effort has been made to develop various types of CP-based sensors [4,6,8,101,[184][185][186]. The signal transduction mechanism of CPs for sensor applications has mostly relied on changes in the electrical properties.…”