Abstract
Population-driven socioeconomic urban expansion, industrialization, and intensified modern agricultural practices are interlinked to environmental challenges culminating in compromised water quality due to pollution by toxic, persistent, and bioaccumulative heavy metal ions, pesticides, nitroaromatics, and other emerging pollutants. Considering the detrimental impact of pollutants on human health and ecosystem, their detection in different media including water is paramount. Notably, electrochemical techniques are more appealing owing to their recognized advantages. This research summarizes and evaluates the most recent advances in the electrochemical sensing of environmental pollutants such as heavy metal ions, pesticides, nitroaromatics, and other distinct emerging contaminants. Besides, the review focuses on the application of electrochemical detection of the selected pollutants through analysis of representative reports in the five years from 2016 to 2020. Therefore, the review is intended to contribute insights and guidelines to contemporary progress in specific electrochemical application practices based on graphene derivatives, toward the aforenamed pollutants. Thus, it focused on sensing methods such as cyclic voltammetry, anodic stripping voltammetry, and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy employing different sensing elements incorporating graphene. Moreover, the review also highlighted graphene synthesis pathways, sensor design strategies, and functionalization. Furthermore, the review showed that there is congruence in the literature that functionalized graphene and its derivatives remain as viable modifiers in electrochemical sensing of pollutants. Nonetheless, the study also appraised the absence of literature reports on electrochemical detection of natural organic matter substances like humic acid and fulvic acid using a graphene-based sensor. In reckoning, current challenges related to graphene synthesis and applicability, envisaged opportunities, and future perspectives are outlined.
Highlights
Owing to global socioeconomic growth spurred by exponential population rise, water quality has been gradually depreciating
Even though some heavy metals (HMs) are derived from biogeochemical mechanisms, significant HMs in the aquatic media are derived from anthropogenic operations such as fossil fuel combustion, mining processes, incineration, and release of municipal wastewater
This review summarizes and evaluates recent advances in the development and application of EC detection of selected environmental pollutants such as HM ions, pesticides, endocrine disruptors, nitroaromatics, and other pollutants of concern, all based on graphene derivative platforms
Summary
Owing to global socioeconomic growth spurred by exponential population rise, water quality has been gradually depreciating. The techniques have gained global recognition owing to their advantages such as high sensitivity, facile operation and procedures, cost-effectiveness, and miniaturizable, portable, and potential on-site application In this part, cyclic voltammetry (CV), anodic stripping voltammetry (ASV), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) are briefly outlined. Based on CV, EIS, and ASV in the mercuric determination, the enhanced sensor behavior was on account of synergic impact emanating from obtained nanostructured material and doping They reported an elevated sensitivity of 72.16 μA μM−1 and a low detection limit of 0.0414 nM within a linear range of 0.01–0.2 μM (Wen et al, 2018). Zhou et al constructed graphene nanoplatelets integrated with a noble metal and Au nanoparticles (GNPs-Au NPs) for refashioning a GCE surface They investigated the determination of trace level bisphenol A (BPA) using CV, DPV, and EIS strategies and applied the sensor to different water matrices. The following are presented: sensor design strategies, the role of nanosized materials, graphene derivative platform synthesis, and lastly the functionalization using diverse materials like metal (oxides) NPs, polymers, and organic and inorganic materials
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