Recent advances in field‐effect transistor sensing strategies for fast and highly efficient analysis of heavy metal ions

Abstract

Heavy metal ions are highly toxic for living organisms especially after bioaccumulation and biomagnification, which possess a serious threat to human health and ecological environment. The rapid, portable, and efficient analytical methods are urgently needed for the determination of heavy metals in different media. Due to the unique advantages of field‐effect transistor (FET) sensors including fast response, easy manipulation, small size, and high sensitivity, FET sensor has become a novel strategy for heavy metal ion monitoring and numerous attempts have been made for the analysis of various heavy metal ions (e.g., mercury, lead, arsenic, copper, cadmium, iron, and silver) in the past decade. Thus, it is of urgent need to systematically summarize recent advances of FET sensing strategies in fast and highly efficient detection of heavy metal ions. In this review, the representative FET sensing platforms for heavy metal ions are introduced with a focus on their working principle and sensing performance. Moreover, the limitations of current FET sensors as well as the gap between the research achievements and practical application requirements are also discussed. At last, future directions of FET sensors in heavy metal ion analysis are proposed, which provides guidance to the further development of FET sensors for monitoring heavy metal ions as well as other chemicals.

Sensor design strategy for environmental and biological monitoring

“…113 Conventional spectroscopic methods such as atomic adsorption spectroscopy, atomic absorption spectroscopy, and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) have been mostly employed to detect heavy metals; however, they require a complex instrumental setup (e.g., rooms for instrument or trained operators) and are time-consuming owing to complicated procedures such as pretreatment and measurement, making them inappropriate for on-site monitoring. 114 A label-free biosensor for Cu (II), based on a graphene FET functionalized with structure-switching aptamer probes against Cu (II), is applicable. To compare Cu(II) concentrations in real fish samples using results obtained from ICP-MS, a traditional method used to analyze heavy metals, demonstrated through the FET sensor system in this study and exhibited good accuracy for the determination of Cu 2+ ions in samples.…”

Molecular Engineering of 2D Nanomaterial Field‐Effect Transistor Sensors: Fundamentals and Translation across the Innovation Spectrum

“…While the stability can be improved by protection of the sensor structure through passivation or packaging, the development of low-cost sensors that can measure water contaminants accurately in the field setting will represent a major development in water sensing. [7,71] Technically, low-cost monitoring of water contaminants is promising when accompanied by scaled-up fabrication of FET/TFET sensor devices, but there are some hurdles regarding performance metrics that need to be overcome in real-world settings. The simultaneous detection of multiple types of contaminants with a high accuracy is the foremost performance metric that requires both classification of contaminant species and their quantification.…”

Identification of Cadmium Compounds in a Solution Using Graphene-Based Sensor Array

“…Conventional methods can determine metal atoms; however, identifying the type of metal compound is difficult, which poses a significant limitation in determining the leakage of heavy metals in water. In addition, sensors focusing on heavy-metal compounds have not been realized in the heavy-metal sensors that were reported in recent years [ 6 , 14 ]. Therefore, this study aims to develop a compact sensor using graphene and chelating agents that is capable of the early detection of cadmium and the identification of cadmium compounds in water.…”