Polymer-based technologies for sensing applications

• Author(s) / Creator(s)

  • Carvalho, Wildemar S. P.
  • Wei, Menglian
  • Ikpo, Nduka
  • Gao, Yongfeng
  • Serpe, Michael J.

• Reports in the literature on the development of new chemical sensing technologies have been growing steadily in number for years. For example, a Web of Science topic search using the term “Chemical Sensing” revealed that over 8 000 papers were published in 2015–2017, with over 40 000 citations to those papers. In this review, we focus on highlighting recent examples of chemical sensing related to human health (e.g., disease diagnosis, health monitoring, and water/food safety) and for environmental monitoring. These respective fields were chosen due to their immense importance. For example, Alzheimer’s disease is a chronic progressive neurodegenerative disorder that causes loss of memory (short-term memory loss) and with time, problems associated with cognitive ability and language. Although there is no cure for the disease, early diagnosis is key to access therapies that can improve a patient’s cognition and enhance their quality of life.(1) Moreover, the development of biosensors for biomarkers of Alzheimer’s disease can also be used to track the development of the disease and the impact of treatment. Another important application of chemical sensors is for determining the safety of drinking water supplies. For example, bacterial infectious agents such as Escherichia coli (E. coli) can cause many health related problems such as diarrhea, abdominal pain, fever, and in more severe cases can lead to death.(2) Finally, chemical sensors can be used to detect contaminants in water bodies that can impact the health of the environment. For example, industrial effluents can lead to unnaturally high concentrations of nutrients in water bodies that can lead to algae blooms that starve water of oxygen and ultimately kill marine life within that zone. Therefore, technologies that can detect high levels of nutrients (or any of a number of contaminants) in water can allow for the source of the release to be pinpointed and the problem remedied before extensive environmental damage can be done.

• Date created

  2017-01-01

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Conjugated Polymer
  • Free Electrochemical Immunoassay
  • Temperature Sensor
  • Tnf-Alpha
  • Molecularly Imprinted Polymer
  • Factor-Alpha
  • Tumor-Necrosis-Factor
  • Escherichia-Coli
  • Rapid Detection
  • Label-Free Detection

• Type of Item

  Article (Draft / Submitted)

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/r3-a9pp-yn12

• License

  © American Chemical Society, 2017. This is an open access article which is free to download and share.