Recent advances in ZnO nanostructure-based electrochemical sensors and biosensors

Nanostructured metal oxides, such as zinc oxide (ZnO), are considered as excellent materials for the fabrication of highly sensitive and selective electrochemical sensors and biosensors due to their good properties, including a high specific surface area, high catalytic efficiency, strong adsorption ability, high isoelectric point (IEP, 9.5), wide band gap (3.2 eV), biocompatibility and high electron communication features. Thus, ZnO nanostructures are widely used to fabricate efficient electrochemical sensors and biosensors for the detection of various analytes. In this review, we have discussed the synthesis of ZnO nanostructures and the advances in various ZnO nanostructure-based electrochemical sensors and biosensors for medical diagnosis, pharmaceutical analysis, food safety, and environmental pollution monitoring. This journal is © The Royal Society of Chemistry

Glassy Carbon Electrode Modified with N-Doped Reduced Graphene Oxide Sheets as an Effective Electrochemical Sensor for Amaranth Detection

Amaranth is one of the synthetic azo colorants used to improve the appearance and to increase the appeal of some foods and soft drinks. The excessive consumption of amaranth can be associated with health side effects, emphasizing the need to monitor this food dye. Accordingly, the present study aimed to introduce an electrochemical sensor of glassy carbon electrode (GCE) modified with N-doped reduced graphene oxide (N-rGO), N-rGO/GCE, to detect the amaranth sensitively and rapidly. Several electrochemical techniques such as differential pulse voltammetry (DPV), linear sweep voltammetry (LSV), chronoamperometry (CHA), and cyclic voltammetry (CV) are exploited for the evaluation of the efficiency of the developed electrode for the detection of amaranth. We found that N-rGO/GCE enhanced amaranth oxidation, thus significantly elevating the current signal. Amaranth showed that calibration curves ranged from 0.1 to 600.0 µM, and the limit of detection (LOD) (S/N = 3) was 0.03 µM. Finally, the developed sensor was effectively applied for real samples (tap water, apple juice, and orange juice) with acceptable recovery values from 96.0 to 104.3%

Magnetic nanomaterials based electrochemical (bio)sensors for food analysis

It is widely accepted that nanotechnology attracted more interest because of various values that nanomaterial applications offers in different fields. Recently, researchers have proposed nanomaterials based electrochemical sensors and biosensors as one of the potent alternatives or supplementary analytical tools to the conventional detection procedures that consumes a lot of time. Among different nanomaterials, researchers largely considered magnetic nanomaterials (MNMs) for developing and fabricating the electrochemical (bio)sensors for numerous utilizations. Among several factors, healthier and higher quality foods are the most important preferences of consumers and manufacturers. For this reason, developing new techniques for rapid, precise as well as sensitive determination of components or contaminants of foods is very important. Therefore, developing the new electrochemical (bio)sensors in food analysis is one of the key and effervescent research fields. In this review, firstly, we presented the properties and synthesis strategies of MNMs. Then, we summarized some of the recently developed MNMs-based electrochemical (bio)sensors for food analysis including detecting the antioxidants, synthetic food colorants, pesticides, heavy metal ions, antibiotics and other analytes (bisphenol A, nitrite and aflatoxins) from 2010 to 2020. Finally, the present review described advantages, challenges as well as future directions in this field. © 2021 Elsevier B.V

Performance of metal-organic frameworks in the electrochemical sensing of environmental pollutants

Environmental pollution has been a known threat to our world due to the rapid urbanization, changing lifestyle of people, and modern industrialization. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop novel sensing approaches having promising performance with high reliability and sensitivity for the precise monitoring of various pollutants. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have been intensively investigated by many researchers as electrode modifiers for electrochemical sensing due to their excellent properties and efficiency. Diverse MOF-based electrochemical sensing systems are applied for environmental analysis for the sensitive, rapid and cost-effective determination of various analytes because of their unique structures, and properties, including the tunable pore size, high surface area, high catalytic activity, and high density of active sites. The aim of this review article is to evaluate the application of MOFs in the electrochemical sensing of environmental pollutants including heavy metal ions, pesticides, phenolic compounds, nitroaromatic compounds, antibiotics, nitrite, and hydrazine. Current limitations and future directions for the application of MOF-based electrochemical sensors for the detection of environmental pollutants are discussed. © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2021