Advanced nanomaterial inks for screen-printed chemical sensors

Screen-printing technology is an efficient integrated preparation method for the manufacture of chemical sensors in biological detection due to its low cost, large scale capacity and facile operation. Especially with the fast development of the nanomaterial science, more and more nanomaterials have been introduced in the fabrication of screen-printed chemical sensor devices. Among them, most research just focuses on the modification of nanomaterials on the already screen-printed electrode. However, if the nanomaterial can be directly prepared as the screen-printing ink, the efficiency will be greatly improved due to the process simplification and cost reduction. In this review, the recent progress in the nanomaterial based inks for screen-printed chemical sensors will be summarized, especially emphasizing the nanostructure synthesis and protection methods for the ink preparations. The performance of different nanomaterial inks printed chemical sensors are concluded with the different applications, the theoretical work mechanisms of different nanomaterials are also discussed for comparison. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.