DIGITAL ASSIGNMENT-1

NANOSENSORS-OVERVIEW

SUBMITTED BY-ANANYA
REGISTRATION N0.-20BEC0202
 INTRODUCTION

Our modern lives rely on sensors to allow society to run smoothly. Sensors in the road
detect cars at traffic lights and adjust the flow through intersections accordingly.
Sensors at shopping malls detect your presence and open doors to allow you to enter.
Sensors measure the water level in your washing machine and ensure it doesn’t
overflow.

Nano sensors are platforms with a characteristic dimension - nanometer in scale, and
work in much the same way as a sensor; they detect either minute particles or
miniscule quantities of something.

“Nano Sensors are chemical or mechanical sensors that can be used to detect the
presence of chemical species and nanoparticles, or monitor physical parameters such
as temperature, on the nanoscale.” They find use in medical diagnostic applications,
food and water quality sensing, and other chemicals.”

Nanotechnology deals with physical or chemical properties of matter at the

nanoscale, which can be different from their bulk properties. Nanosensors can take
advantage of these phenomena. Important characteristics and quality parameters of
nanosensors can therefore be improved over the case of classically modeled sensors
with merely reduced sensing parts and/or the transducer.

Therefore, nanosensors are not necessarily reduced in size to the nanoscale, but
could be larger devices that make use of the unique properties of nanomaterials to
detect and measure events at the nanoscale. For instance, in noble metals such as
silver or gold, nanostructures of smaller size than the de Broglie wavelength for
electrons lead to an intense absorption in the visible/near-UV region that is absent in
the spectrum of the bulk material. Nanosensors have been developed for the detection
of gases, chemical and biochemical variables, as well as physical variables and the
detection electromagnetic radiation.
 NANOSENSOR FABRICATION

Nanosensors can be prepared by using different methods. Three common methods are
top-down lithography, bottom-up fabrication (such as for instance controlled lateral
epitaxial growth and atomic layer deposition), and self-assembled nanostructures
(usually done with biomolecules, e.g. liposomes, that combine in such a way that the
biochemical detection of an analyte is converted into an electrical signal.

NANOSENSORS BASED ON NANOPARTICLES AND NANOCLUSTERS

Nanoparticles, primarily noble metal ones, have outstanding size-dependent optical

properties that have been used to build optical nanosensors. Apart from metal
nanoparticles, optical nanosensors based on fluorescence measurements have been
built with semiconductor quantum dots and other optical sensors have been
developed with nanoscale probes that contain dyes whose fluorescence is quenched
in the presence of the analyte to be determined; nanoparticle films have been used for
gas sensors; magnetic nanoparticles bound to biorecognitive molecules (i.e. DNA,
enzymes, etc.) have been used to enrich the analyte to be detected.

NANOSENSORS BASED ON NANOWIRES, NANOFIBRES AND CARBON NANOTUBES

Most sensors based on carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are field effect transistors (FET)
because, although CNTs are robust and inert structures, their electrical properties are
extremely sensitive to the effects of charge transfer and chemical doping by various
molecules. The functionalization of CNTs is important for making them selective to
the target analyte – different types of sensors are based based on molecular
recognition interactions between functionalism CNT and target analytes. For instance,
researchers have developed flexible hydrogen sensors using single-walled carbon
nanotubes decorated with palladium nanoparticles. Nanowires and nanofibers have
also been used to build chemiresistive sensors for the diagnosis of diseases. They
have been used to maximize gas sensor responses in exhaled breath analysis for the
detection of volatile organic compounds (which are biomarkers for various diseases;
for example, acetone, hydrogen sulfide, ammonia, and toluene can be used as
biomarkers for evaluating diabetes, halitosis, kidney malfunction, and lung cancer,
respectively).
NANOSENSORS BASED ON GRAPHENE

Another carbon nanomaterial, functionalized graphene, holds exceptional promise for

biological and chemical sensors. Already, researchers have shown that the distinctive
2D structure of graphene oxide (GO), combined with its superpermeability to water
molecules, leads to sensing devices with an unprecedented speed ("Ultrafast
graphene sensor monitors your breath while you speak"). Scientists have found that
chemical vapors change the noise spectra of graphene transistors, allowing them to
perform selective gas sensing for many vapors with a single device made of pristine
graphene – no functionalization of the graphene surface required ("Selective gas
sensing with pristine graphene").

GRAPHENE STRUCTURE
 APPLICATIONS OF NANOSENSORS

There are many different applications where the heightened sensitivity of nanosensors
are useful. We discuss a few of these in some detail below:

• Optical Nano sensing

Optical nanosensors have established themselves as an excellent sensing technique

in biological applications. This is especially true in bioimaging, where the nanosensor
can measure the fluorescence of a molecule with a high sensitivity. Optical
nanosensors contain nanomaterials that have non-toxic receptors attached to the
surface, so that optical changes within an environment can be detected. In addition to
detecting fluorescence, optical nanosensors can also be used to monitor ion
concentration, toxic levels within a cellular environment and to monitor any unwanted
and interfering species.

• Monitoring the Environment

Nanosensors have a great ability to monitor and analyze micro-organisms and toxic-
chemical compounds found in environmental samples. Nanomaterials can be used to
enhance the sensitivity of electrochemical sensors and ion-selective electrodes
(ISEs), which are the conventional techniques used for the detection of trace amount
of metals, nitrates, phosphates and pesticides in waterborne samples.
• Light sensing

Many applications focus on the detection of various molecules in a certain

environment. However, nanosensors can also be used to detect electromagnetic
radiation. One example is using zinc oxide nanorods, or zinc oxide nanowires, to
detect UV radiation at low levels. Nanowires are often used in electromagnetic
radiation sensing applications because they change their resistive state and invoke a
measurable response to electromagnetic rays. Nanowires can also be used in parallel
where the electrons cascade across all the nanowires and provide a quick and
effective response.

Combining Nanosensors with Other Technologies

There is a growing trend of combining nanosensors with other useful technologies,

such as microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and microfluidic devices. Examples
of where this has been useful include: depositing nanoparticles onto silicon substrates
for more efficient chemical and gas sensing applications, gold nanowires in
microfluidic devices to detect cholesterol in blood samples, using carbon nanotubes
(CNTs) on silicon to detect harmful traces of ammonia, and in fluid-based MEMS
devices to detect trace amounts of microorganisms in a fluidic sample.
 ADVANTAGES OF NANOSENSORS

Nanomaterials-based sensors have several benefits in sensitivity and specificity over

sensors made from traditional materials, due to nanomaterial features not present in
bulk material that arise at the nanoscale. Nanosensors can have increased specificity
because they operate at a similar scale as natural biological processes, allowing
functionalization with chemical and biological molecules, with recognition events that
cause detectable physical changes. Enhancements in sensitivity stem from the high
surface-to-volume ratio of nanomaterials, as well as novel physical properties of
nanomaterials that can be used as the basis for detection, including nanophotonics.
Nanosensors can also potentially be integrated with nanoelectronics to add native
processing capability to the nanosensor.

In addition to their sensitivity and specificity, nanosensors offer significant

advantages in cost and response times, making them suitable for high-throughput
applications. Nanosensors provide real-time monitoring compared to traditional
detection methods such as chromatography and spectroscopy. These traditional
methods may take days to weeks to obtain results and often require investment in
capital costs as well as time for sample preparation.

One-dimensional nanomaterials such as nanowires and nanotubes are well suited for
use in nanosensors, as compared to bulk or thin-film planar devices. They can function
both as transducers and wires to transmit the signal. Their high surface area can
cause large signal changes upon binding of an analyte. Their small size can enable
extensive multiplexing of individually addressable sensor units in a small device. Their
operation is also "label free" in the sense of not requiring fluorescent or radioactive
labels on the analytes.Zinc oxide nanowire is used for gas sensing applications, given
that it exhibits high sensitivity toward low concentration of gas under ambient
conditions and can be fabricated easily with low cost.
 REFERENCES

1) https://www.nanosensors.com/
2) https://www.nature.com/subjects/nanosen
sors
3) https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelandi
ng/2019/ra/c8ra10144b
4) https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/1
945-7111/ab67aa
5) https://jnanobiotechnology.biomedcentral.
com/articles/10.1186/s12951-018-0393-7