Nano(bio)sensors in Detection of Micropollutants

Introduction

Nanotechnology is now an integral part of almost every field including health, medicine, electronics food, communication, etc. basically nanotechnology has been defined as the production of functional materials or devices in the range of 1-100nm (Parolo and Merkoçi, 2013). The involvement of nanotechnology is increasing day by day especially the use of Nanofibers, Nano balls, and nanoparticles in the development of Nanosensors. This includes the development of both biosensors and chemical sensors (Christopher et al., 2020) A huge collection of nanomaterials having different morphology and properties are available nowadays. The most important feature of nanomaterials is their size which has revolutionized fields of science and technology at the same time (Pumera et al., 2007). Particularly they can tailor size hence providing the excellent ability for designing novel sensing systems and also the performance of certain chemical and biological assays at the same time. The particles which are smaller than their characteristic length often display specific chemistry and physics that lead to new properties being dependent on the size of those particles (Xu,et al., 2020). Surface to volume ratio increases considerably with a decrease in size at the same time and the surface resonance phenomenon predominates in the meanwhile. The reduction of sensing parts is important for miniaturizing devices at the nanoscale (Solaimuthu et al., 2020). Nanotechnology deals with such a new phenomenon dealing with the creation of biosensors eventually. Sensitivity can also be increased for obtaining better conduction properties providing properties such as small amounts of samples that can be analyzed directly, detections without the use of labels, and elimination of labels thus, in turn, reducing the use of chemicals and waste products (Nair & Alam, 2006). The transduction mechanism is significant in the Nanosensors as they have the ability to conversion of bio responses of the interaction of analytes to a reproducible manner (Chiu & Huang, 2009). Specifically, they convert biochemical reaction energy to electrical form. The nanoparticles are found to be excellent material in this sense as they possess a high surface-to-volume ratio that allows proper usage of the surface more functionally. Moreover, electrochemical and optical properties are important in terms of biosensors (Quazi et al., 2021). Nanomaterials have also updated the field of molecular biology providing opportunities for the manipulation of atoms and molecules and the monitoring of cellular structures with high precision and sensitivity.

For understanding the technology behind Nano biosensors one must be able to understand the idea of biosensors. Nano biosensors are the modification of biosensors that employ the use of nanomaterials in such an analytical device (Hammond et al., 2016). Nanomaterials employ the use of a variety of nanomaterials that help in the detection of toxic contaminants in food as well as soil. This chapter aims to provide an overview of the Nano biosensors and their applications in environmental analysis involving mechanisms used by them and the detection of micropollutants at a very early stage providing solutions to environmental pollution issues.