Nanostructures of noble metals as functional materials in biosensors

Abstract

Recent advancement in nanoscience and nanotechnologies inspired a wide spectrum of uses of nanodimensional materials ranging from industrial sector to biomedical applications. Inorganic nanomaterials made of noble metals, which are corrosion-resistant, are often included as electrode modifiers in designing electrochemical chemosensors and biosensors because of their unique catalytic, electric, and surface-related properties. This review summarizes the developments in electrochemical biosensors with integrated in their architecture metal nanostructures reported mainly during the last two years with a summary on some of the commonly used methods for the synthesis of metallic nanostructures. Nanodimensional noble metal structures might be considered as multipurpose electrode modifiers because of their abilities to act at the same time as electrocatalysts, signal amplifiers, and tools for immobilization and spatial orientation of redox proteins/enzymes or other type of bioreceptors.