Advanced Nanosensors for Environmental Monitoring

Nanoparticle-enhanced chemical and biosensors offer dynamic and quantitative analysis of toxic compounds in drinking water with potentials to provide rapid, ultrasensitive, and accurate risk assessment. This chapter develops a number of nanostructured materials as candidates for assessing the occurrence of water contamination. These include polyamic acid-metal nanoparticle composite membranes, polyoxy-dianiline membranes, sequestered metal nanoparticles within electroconducting polymers, and underpotential deposition of metal films onto solid electrodes. These materials have been utilized to design advanced sensors and have also been integrated with conventional instrumental techniques such as flow injection analysis (FIA), liquid chromatography (LC), and gas chromatography (GC). The resulting nanostructured sensors have been tested for the detection and identification of bacteria based on antibiotic susceptibility, multiarray electrochemical sensor with pattern recognition techniques, as well as for metal enhanced detection of DNA-DNA, DNA-toxin, and DNA-drug interactions.