Magnetic nanomaterials based electrochemical (bio)sensors for food analysis

It is widely accepted that nanotechnology attracted more interest because of various values that nanomaterial applications offers in different fields. Recently, researchers have proposed nanomaterials based electrochemical sensors and biosensors as one of the potent alternatives or supplementary analytical tools to the conventional detection procedures that consumes a lot of time. Among different nanomaterials, researchers largely considered magnetic nanomaterials (MNMs) for developing and fabricating the electrochemical (bio)sensors for numerous utilizations. Among several factors, healthier and higher quality foods are the most important preferences of consumers and manufacturers. For this reason, developing new techniques for rapid, precise as well as sensitive determination of components or contaminants of foods is very important. Therefore, developing the new electrochemical (bio)sensors in food analysis is one of the key and effervescent research fields. In this review, firstly, we presented the properties and synthesis strategies of MNMs. Then, we summarized some of the recently developed MNMs-based electrochemical (bio)sensors for food analysis including detecting the antioxidants, synthetic food colorants, pesticides, heavy metal ions, antibiotics and other analytes (bisphenol A, nitrite and aflatoxins) from 2010 to 2020. Finally, the present review described advantages, challenges as well as future directions in this field.

Automated summary

Nanotechnology has attracted attention for its diverse values in different fields, with magnetic nanomaterials (MNMs) being widely considered for developing electrochemical sensors for food analysis. The importance of healthier and higher quality foods has led to the development of new techniques for rapid and precise determination of food components or contaminants. The review highlights properties and synthesis strategies of MNMs, as well as recent advancements in MNMs-based electrochemical sensors for detecting various analytes in foods.