Recent advances in microfluidic sensors for nutrients detection in water

Nutrients play an extremely crucial role in human health, ecosystem stability and directly affect water environmental quality. Therefore, the development of novel sensing methods for in-situ detection of various nutrients in water is urgently needed and of great significance. Microfluidic techniques provide promising and effective analytical tools for high-performance sensing platforms to monitor nutrients in water due to their advantages such as time-saving, less reagent consumption, better process control, portability and ability to on-site detection. In this review, the latest improvements in microfluidic sensors for monitoring nutrients in water are extensively explained. First, the various substrate materials and current microfluidic technologies are briefly addressed. Then, microfluidic approaches for the determi-nation of nitrate, nitrite, ammonia nitrogen, phosphate and silicate are described in detail, emphasizing those works published after 2016. For each device, the sensing principle, device fabrication, and detection performance are presented. Finally, upcoming perspectives and future challenges are thor-oughly discussed.(c) 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

This article extensively explains the latest improvements in microfluidic sensors for monitoring nutrients in water. It addresses the various substrate materials and current microfluidic technologies, and describes in detail the microfluidic approaches for the determination of different nutrients and their detection performance.