Development of surface functionalized metal oxide nanosystems for electrochemical sensing of heavy metals and chemical constituents

Abstract

An environment is getting affected by huge toxic chemicals due to the rapid growth in industrialization and globalization which are contaminated via airborne, aquatic and solid wastes. It is of immense importance for the earlier sensitive detection of environmental pollutants includes heavy metals, inorganic anions, pesticides and chemical warfare reagents which forms the severe root cause for inducing toxicity to human health and environment. So it is important to safeguard the environment by providing sensitive, reliable and cost-effective sensor platforms for detecting the contaminants. The advancements on electrochemical sensor and biosensor platforms are of considerable interests that have been extensively employed using metal oxide nanomaterials, carbon based nanomaterials, polymer and biomaterials owing to their rapid response, high sensitivity and selectivity. The progress in novel electroanalytical tools and nanostructured electrode may offer sensitive and selective sensing platforms. Previously developed nanosystems suffer with selective and sensitive properties. In addition, nanostructure based nanosystems suffers with less stability. Therefore, it is highly imperative to serve with intensive plan of action in which sensor platforms may carries several features such as rapid response, robustness, high selectivity and sensitivity, cost-effective miniaturization, and the perspective for online monitoring towards environmental applications. So, the present thesis has been formulated to satisfy the requirements with complete advancements on nanomaterials based electrochemical sensors for environmental applications. newline