17 - Polymer composites for electrochemical sensor applications

Abstract

Conducting polymers can be fabricated as composites with many other materials, such as carbon-based materials, enzymes, nanoparticles, and/or nanocomposites of metals and metal oxides for enhancing adsorption of analytes, which increases sensitivity, selectivity, stability, and biocompatibility of the electrochemical sensors. Among various conducting polymers, polypyrroles, polyanilines, PEDOT, and polythiophenes are taken to be superior electrochemical sensor fabrication materials. This is the researchable area of electrochemistry at present. In electrochemical sensing, high sensitivity, fast response, and good selectivity are required to obtain viable and meaningful information. This chapter presents an overview of the fabrication of conducting polymer composites by various chemical methods such as sol–gel, in situ oxidative polymerization, template-based methods, solid-state synthesis, and others. The authors also explain exactly how various characterization techniques for polymer composites are applied to study their property, structure, and morphology. Finally, the synthesis of graphene and carbon nanotube-based polymer composite electrochemical sensors and their applications in clinical diagnostics, food safety, food quality, biological analysis, and environmental monitoring are presented.