4. Sensing of environmental pollutants
4.1. Detection of pathogens
Microbial diseases due to infections from bacteria, viruses and
other pathogenic micro-organisms constitute the major cause of
death in many developing countries. These pathogens could and
have been used as biological warfare agents. Hence, rapid and
cost-effective detection of pathogens is essential for proper
Fig. 5. (a) Back-gated graphene-FET on Si/SiO2 substrate, (b) solution-gated graphene-FET on a flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate (He et al., 2012). SWNTbased
chemiresistor configuration showing (c) single SWNT and (d) network of SWNTs as conducting channel (Kim et al., 2007).
P. Ramnani et al. / Chemosphere 143 (2016) 85–98 89
diagnosis, outbreak prevention and prescribing correct therapeutic
treatment. The commonly used methods for detection like polymerase
chain reaction (PCR) (Rodríguez-Lázaro et al., 2005) and
enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay ELISA (Crowther, 1995),
though sensitive and selective, are multi-step and additionally
require sample pretreatment and long assay times. Carbon nanomaterial-based
electrochemical biosensors, owing to their high
sensitivity and specificity, facilitate detection of a broad spectrum
of analytes in complex sample matrices and do so in a simple and
cost-effective manner.