Direct and Selective Electrochemical Vapor Trace Detection of Organic Peroxide Explosives via Surface Decoration.

The ability to detect traces of highly energetic explosive materials sensitively, selectively, accurately, and rapidly could be of enormous benefit to civilian national security, military applications, and environmental monitoring. Unfortunately, the detection of explosives still poses a largely unmet arduous analytical problem, making their detection an issue of burning immediacy and a massive current challenge in terms of research and development. Although numerous explosive detection approaches have been developed, these methods are usually time-consuming, require bulky equipment, tedious sample preparation, a trained operator, cannot be miniaturized, and lack the ability to perform automated real-time high-throughput analysis, strongly handicapping their mass deployment.

Cellular Metabolomics by a Universal Redox-Reactive Nanosensors Array: From the Cell Level to Tumor-on-a-Chip Analysis.

Although biosensors based on nanowires-field effect transistor were proved extraordinarily efficient in fundamental applications, screening of charges due to the high-ionic strength of most physiological solutions imposes severe limitations in the design of smart, "real-time" sensors, as the biosample solution has to be previously desalted. This work describes the development of a novel nanowire biosensor that performs extracellular real-time multiplex sensing of small molecular metabolites, the true indicators of the body's chemistry machinery, without any preprocessing of the biosample. Unlike other nanoFET devices that follow direct binding of analytes to their surfaces, our nanodevice acts by sensing the oxidation state of redox-reactive chemical species bound to its surface.

Manipulating and Monitoring On-Surface Biological Reactions by Light-Triggered Local pH Alterations.

Significant research efforts have been dedicated to the integration of biological species with electronic elements to yield smart bioelectronic devices. The integration of DNA, proteins, and whole living cells and tissues with electronic devices has been developed into numerous intriguing applications. In particular, the quantitative detection of biological species and monitoring of biological processes are both critical to numerous areas of medical and life sciences.

Optically-gated self-calibrating nanosensors: monitoring pH and metabolic activity of living cells.

Quantitative detection of biological and chemical species is critical to numerous areas of medical and life sciences. In this context, information regarding pH is of central importance in multiple areas, from chemical analysis, through biomedical basic studies and medicine, to industry. Therefore, a continuous interest exists in developing new, rapid, miniature, biocompatible and highly sensitive pH sensors for minute fluid volumes.