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Advanced Electrochemical Sensors for Environmental Monitoring
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Advanced Electrochemical Sensors for Environmental Monitoring

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Chemical Sensors".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 20 October 2026 | Viewed by 1463

Editor

Dr. Magdalena Wajrak

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Science, Edith Cowan University, Joondalup 6027, Australia
Interests: voltammetry; electrochemistry; pH sensors; development of onsite methods for heavy metal detection in water and soil samples

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Electrochemical sensors are rapidly evolving into important tools for environmental monitoring, driven by advances in materials science and, more recently, artificial intelligence. Current research focuses on developing sensors with greater sensitivity, selectivity, stability, and the possibility of miniaturisation for the detection of trace levels of contaminants such as heavy metals, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and microplastics in complex environmental matrices.  The field is rapidly progressing toward more robust, green, and intelligent sensing systems that can provide comprehensive, real-time insights into environmental quality. The integration of nanomaterials—including graphene, carbon nanotubes, and metal nanoparticles—has significantly enhanced electron transfer and surface reactivity, improving analytical performance.

This Special Issue welcomes contributions that explore novel sensing materials such as RuO2-based electrodes and nanostructured composites, alongside machine learning techniques for signal processing. Emphasis will be placed on systems capable of real-time and in situ monitoring, autonomous calibration, and integration with wireless networks or IoT platforms. By bridging electrochemistry, environmental science, and computational intelligence, this issue aims to showcase how smart sensing technologies can improve detection accuracy and support data-driven environmental decision-making. Applications in water and air quality, soil contamination, and climate-related metrics will be central to this collection, offering a comprehensive view of the future of intelligent environmental sensing.

Dr. Magdalena Wajrak
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sensors is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • electrochemical sensors
  • environmental monitoring
  • smart sensing
  • solid-state electrodes
  • artificial intelligence

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 1276 KB  
Article
Attenuation of Redox Interference in RuO2 pH Sensor Using a Ta2O5/Nafion Multilayer Architecture
by Wade Lonsdale, Magdalena Wajrak, Md Mahamudul Hassan and James Jin Kang
Sensors 2026, 26(15), 4960; https://doi.org/10.3390/s26154960 - 5 Aug 2026
Viewed by 99
Abstract
Despite the growing preference for solid-state pH sensors due to their advantages over glass pH electrodes, their practical application is still limited by challenges, particularly in metal-oxide based systems. The main issue is their susceptibility to redox-active species such as dissolved oxygen, ascorbic [...] Read more.
Despite the growing preference for solid-state pH sensors due to their advantages over glass pH electrodes, their practical application is still limited by challenges, particularly in metal-oxide based systems. The main issue is their susceptibility to redox-active species such as dissolved oxygen, ascorbic acid, sulfides, and transition-metal ions. In this work, the effects of representative redox interferents, with particular emphasis on ascorbic acid, together with dissolved oxygen and potassium permanganate, were investigated and mitigated through the application of Ta2O5/Nafion overlayers. The solid-state metal-oxide pH-sensitive electrodes were fabricated with laser micro-etching of radio-frequency (RF) sputtered RuO2 thin films deposited on ceramic Al2O3 substrates. The resulting RuO2 electrodes exhibited excellent potentiometric pH sensing characteristics, including near-Nernstian sensitivity (58.8 mV pH−1 at 25 °C), highly linear response over a wide pH range (pH 2–12, R2 > 0.9999), minimal hysteresis (1.3 mV), low potential drift (2.9 mV h−1), and fast response times (<30 s). Following on from our previous work, which demonstrated that the Ta2O5/Nafion solid-state sensor could measure beverage pH accurately, here we explain why that architecture works by systematically investigating the role of Ta2O5 and Nafion in suppressing redox interference and improving measurement stability in complex sample matrices. The results demonstrate that RuO2 electrodes modified with combined Ta2O5/Nafion thin films exhibit significantly enhanced measurement stability compared to unmodified RuO2 electrodes, owing to effective suppression of potential fluctuations induced by dissolved oxygen and representative redox couples, particularly those associated with ascorbic acid interference. These findings could give a promising strategy for improving the robustness and reliability of solid-state RuO2-based pH sensors in complex electrochemical environments. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Electrochemical Sensors for Environmental Monitoring)
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12 pages, 1750 KB  
Article
Magneto-Optical Surface Plasmon Resonance Multi-Spot Assay for Identification and Quantification of Gaseous Compounds at Room Temperature
by Sorin David, Cristina Polonschii, Elena Gabriela Cocos-Barbu, Dumitru Bratu and Eugen Gheorghiu
Sensors 2026, 26(14), 4537; https://doi.org/10.3390/s26144537 - 17 Jul 2026
Viewed by 338
Abstract
Rapid room-temperature identification of gases and volatile organic compounds remains challenging for compact sensing platforms, particularly when chemically related analytes must be discriminated using accessible sensing materials. In this work, we evaluate whether magneto-optical surface plasmon resonance (MOSPR), combined with multi-spot sensing and [...] Read more.
Rapid room-temperature identification of gases and volatile organic compounds remains challenging for compact sensing platforms, particularly when chemically related analytes must be discriminated using accessible sensing materials. In this work, we evaluate whether magneto-optical surface plasmon resonance (MOSPR), combined with multi-spot sensing and conventional SPR readout from the same chip, can provide complementary response features for improved gas/VOC discrimination. The sensing spots are made from accessible chemicals and nanoparticles with plasmonic and magnetic properties. The sensor chip consists of a multilayer structure of metallic materials with both plasmonic and magnetic properties featuring enhanced sensitivity and stability. Measurements are made using a custom-built MOSPR instrument at relevant analyte concentrations. Analyte-specific sensor channels were selected for concentration-dependent calibration while the complete multivariate data were first explored using principal component analysis for supervised analyte classification. The combined 16-feature MOSPR/SPR model achieved an overall accuracy of 88.3% and a balanced accuracy of 87.6% under leave-one-concentration-block-out cross-validation compared with 66.2% and 65.7%, respectively, for the SPR measurement alone. These results show that MOSPR provides response information that encompasses and extends that obtained from conventional SPR measurements, thereby improving analyte discrimination. The proposed approach may provide a basis for future environmental monitoring and industrial process control, including real-time monitoring of harmful gaseous emissions pending further validation under application-specific conditions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Electrochemical Sensors for Environmental Monitoring)
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15 pages, 1939 KB  
Communication
3D Printed Ion-Selective Electrodes Enriched with ZnO Nanoparticles for Potassium Detection
by Ita Hajdin and Ante Prkić
Sensors 2026, 26(6), 1960; https://doi.org/10.3390/s26061960 - 20 Mar 2026
Viewed by 647
Abstract
Ion-selective electrodes (ISEs) are widely used analytical tools for the determination of specific ions in a variety of analytical applications due to their simplicity, selectivity, and low cost. Recent developments in materials science and digital fabrication have opened new opportunities for redesigning ISEs [...] Read more.
Ion-selective electrodes (ISEs) are widely used analytical tools for the determination of specific ions in a variety of analytical applications due to their simplicity, selectivity, and low cost. Recent developments in materials science and digital fabrication have opened new opportunities for redesigning ISEs using modern manufacturing techniques. Here, we present a new application of 3D printing for fabricating potassium-selective electrodes using a simplified membrane composition. The 3D printing cocktail was prepared by mixing potassium tetraphenylborate, silver sulfide or graphite, and industrial ABS (acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene) polymer. Membranes were tested both without and with the addition of ZnO nanoparticles. Incorporation of ZnO NPs significantly enhanced the electrode slope, while graphite-based membranes exhibited faster response, with potential stabilizing within 3–7 s across a concentration range of 4.88 × 10−5 mol L−1 to 1.00 × 10−2 mol L−1. The optimized 3D printed membrane containing 0.6% ZnO NPs showed near-Nernstian behaviour (slope: 59.178 mV per decade and R2 = 0.9989), a limit of detection of 2.06 × 10−5 mol L−1 and high selectivity against common interfering ions. These results demonstrate that 3D printing combined with a suitable membrane composition and nanoparticle incorporation provides a versatile platform for rapid, reproducible, and high-performance potassium ISEs. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advanced Electrochemical Sensors for Environmental Monitoring)
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