Recently, carbon-based nanomaterials (CBNM) have been widely used for
chemical and biosensing applications due to their outstanding physicochemical
properties, such as mechanical, thermal, optical, electrical and structural diversity. Such
materials include carbon nanotubes, graphene oxide, graphene quantum dots and
fullerene. As a consequence of inimitable features, these give superior strength,
electrical conductivity, and flexibility toward numerous chemical and biological
objects, which is valuable for chemical sensing and biosensing purposes. However, the
specific intrinsic property makes graphene and carbon nanotubes (CNTs) most
attractive among the various allotropes of carbon. Since the environmental
contaminants in ppm level affect the people, therefore the use of CBNM for
environmental sensing provides an accessible cache of data for modelling, which
makes it easy to monitor environmental challenges. Thus, the biological, chemical,
thermal, stress, optical, strain and flow sensors deliver a larger surface area, excellent
electrical conductivity with chemical constancy, as well as mechanical difficulty with
straightforward functionalization pathways of CNTs to improve old-style carbon
electrode sensor platforms. Therefore, in this chapter, the CBNM for sensing purposes
are focused in detail on their mechanism.
Keywords: Carbon electrode, CNT, Optical property, Physicochemical property, Sensors.