Emerging and Future Possible Strategies for Enhancing 1D Inorganic Nanomaterials-Based Electrical Sensors towards Explosives Vapors Detection

Due to the necessity for maintaining homeland security and antiterrorism, a greatly growing demand exists for sensors that can detect explosives vapors. One-dimensional inorganic nanomaterials represent one kind of the most promising materials for sensor fabrication due to the large surface-to-volume ratios, quantum confinement, high reaction activities, excellent electrical, optical, and chemical properties, unique anisotropic morphologies, and abundant structure tuning capabilities. All of these properties make the 1D inorganic nanomaterials ideal nanoscale building blocks in explosives vapors sensing applications. However, due to the big challenges, such as manufacturing technique with high cost and energy consumption, the difficulty of the assembling and patterning of 1D inorganic nanomaterials into functional devices, the weak repeatability for surface modification which hinder the development of sensors with high sensitivity, selectivity, low power consumption, simple structure, fast response and recovery procedures, high reliability and biocompatibility, more advanced strategies are needed for enhancing 1D-inorganic-nanomaterials-based electrical sensors towards explosives vapors detection. In this article, a comprehensive review of the recent progresses on emerging and future possible strategies for enhancing 1D-inorganic-nanomaterials-based electrical sensors towards explosives vapors detection is provided.