Nanostructured Surfaces in Sensing Systems

Dear Colleagues,

Differently nanostructured surfaces have been proposed as sensing elements or as supports to sensing systems. Nanostructures mainly consist of metal or non-metal nanoparticles and of carbon nanosized materials, e.g., carbon nanotubes, graphene, or carbon black. They may be deposited by a number of physical, chemical or electrochemical tools, suitable to induce the formation of ultra-fine roughness on flat surfaces, achieving sensors with sought performances. Nanostructures imply the presence of defects, i.e., reactive sites, of the structure of the material in contact with the measurement environment, which increases the reactivity and even the stability of anchored residues. Furthermore, whenever a dynamic measurement procedure is operative, they activate more effective diffusion regimes.

The Special Issue intends to collect contributions devoted to developing sensing systems exploiting similar peculiarities. Characterization with most modern or, nowadays, widespread instrumental techniques, coupled with efficiency testing of the developed systems, is mandatory in order to envisage property-to-structure relationships. Applications in real matrices, also giving reasons for the actual advantages offered by sensing with respect to sophisticated laboratory instrumentation, are welcome. Tests should be based on a rigorous and convincing statistical treatment of the data.

Engineering of systems in actually-working demonstrators or prototypes are also welcome.

Prof. Dr. Renato Seeber
Prof. Dr. Chiara Zanardi
Dr. Fabio Terzi
Guest Editors

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