Recent developments in carbon nanomaterial-enabled electrochemical sensors for nitrite detection

Nitrite is widely found in the natural environment and human life, but the abuse and potential toxicity of nitrite poses a great threat to human health. Therefore, it is necessary to develop effective, robust, and reliable methods for nitrite detection. Carbon nanomaterials have shown their great potential in the development of high-performance electrochemical sensors in view of their numerous fascinating properties. Carbon nanomaterial-enabled electrochemical sensors have been regarded as one of the most promising detection tools for nitrite due to their high sensitivity, simplicity of operation, and excellent selectivity. In this review, we introduce the state-of-art of carbon nanomaterial-enabled electrochemical sensors in nitrite detection in the past years (2014-2018). The properties and advantages of carbon nanotubes, graphene, graphene oxide, carbon nanofibers, carbon nanodots, nanodiamonds, and nanoporous carbon in the development of nitrite sensors are discussed in details. Furthermore, the challenges and prospects for the application of carbon nanomaterial-enabled electrochemical sensors for nitrite analysis are also included. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.