Emerging nanomaterials for analytical detection

摘要

This chapter revises the recent trends in the use and applications of nanomaterials (NMs) in analytical detections with special interest in food quality control. The most important NMs such as gold nanoparticles, quantum dots, carbon-related nanomaterials and their properties are introduced. We show how analytical science is taking advantage of such materials to either develop new analytical methods or improve the existing technologies. Biosensing, in both batch and lab-on-a-chip formats, is one of the most important analytical technologies that is in the forefront of such interesting applications. The use of these materials in some conventional analytical techniques such as chromatography between others also is discussed. Examples related to such NMs application in real food samples with interest for quality control as well as detection of various interesting compounds such as glucose, amino acids, DNA (normally present in food) or other species that are usually of interest to be detected for safety reasons (bacteria, toxins) are discussed. Aspects related to the improvements of analytical performance in terms of detection limits, stability, selectivity, etc. using various NMs and detection technologies also are discussed.