Recent Trends in Plasmonic Silver Nano-sensors Development for Copper Metal Ion Sensing in Aqueous Medium: A Comprehensive Review

Owing to the detrimental effect on human health, the contamination of drinking water and water sources by metal and heavy metal ions has received significant attention from the scientific community. Among the metal ions, copper has drawn considerable attention, since at a certain dose, it holds significance in the physiological processes of the living being, but when used excessively, it could be very toxic and can cause many diseases. Hence, the ongoing research focus is on creating accurate and affordable analytical techniques or procedures for detecting copper ions in drinking water. With advancements in different analytical methods, currently, nanoparticle-based sensors are widely developed especially plasmonic (Ag and Au) due to a wide range of optical properties that offer fast real-time visualization. This review paper briefly covers the synthetic process of plasmonic (silver) nanoparticles and provides a comprehensive overview of the recent trends in developing silver-based plasmonic nano-sensors for copper metal ions. The review revealed that silver-based plasmonic nano-sensors are promising tools for copper metal ion sensing and could detect with high selectivity and sensitivity with the minimum set-up in real water samples.