Recent advances in nanostructured chemosensors and biosensors

Abstract

Over the past few decades the fabrication of nanoscale materials for use in chemical sensing, biomedical and biological analyses has proven a promising avenue. Nanomaterials show promise in such chemical and biological analysis mainly due to their highly tunable size- and shape-dependent chemical and physical properties. Furthermore, they exhibit unique surface chemistry, thermal stability, high surface area and large pore volume per unit mass that can be exploited for sensor fabrication. This review will discuss the chemical and physical properties of nanomaterials necessary for use as chemosensors and biosensors. It will also highlight some noteworthy recent avenues using nanoscale materials as scaffolds for chemosensing and biosensing. Nanomaterials that have proven to be useful for the fabrication of sensors, as reviewed herein, have compositions including metals, metal oxides, chalcogenides and polymers. Their structures range from nanoparticles, nanorods, and nanowires to nanoporous and core-shells. Examples of the different types of structures and compositions as well as sensors and biosensors fabricated from them will be described. Some nanomaterials are functionalized with various kinds of ligands and bioactive groups to produce sensitive and selective sensors for specific analytes. The combination of two or more types of nanostructures with core-shell type nanoassemblies and other composite structures, in addition to advantageous features enhancing sensitivity and response time of related sensors, are also discussed.

A Self-Contained System With CNTs-Based Biosensors for Cell Culture Monitoring

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Optical Chemical Sensors:Design and Applications

“…In any case, the optical properties that can be controlled at the nanoscale are of great interest in the field of optical sensor designing (Borisov & Klimant, 2008). Some optical chemical NSs rely on quantum dots (Asefa et al 2009), metal beads (Shtykov & Rusanova, 2008) and other materials; however, most of them make use of indicators embedded in polymer beads (Lapresta et al, 2009;Zenkl & Klimant, 2009) and sol-gels Hun & Zhang, 2007;Sun et al, 2006).…”

Electron Beam Assisted Gas Phase Synthesis of SiO2 Nanoparticles in an Ambient Condition

“…Nanoparticles have been widely used in various applications including solar cells (Günes et al, 2007), biology and medicine (O'Farrell et al, 2006), energy conversion and storage (Arico et al, 2005), chemosensors and biosensors (Asefa et al, 2009). For this reason, nanoparticle synthesis technology has been continuously developed.…”