Sensors for Heavy Metals and Dyes Detection for Water Analysis

Today, the amount of pollutants in water is increasing worldwide. When heavy metals and dyes are present in aquatic environments more than the World Health Organization’s (WHO) allowed limits, issues can arise for both aquatic life and humans. Most water resources are contaminated by these highly toxic, carcinogenic, and nonbiodegradable contaminants, which cause serious health problems, including hypersensitivity reactions. To detect or quantify these pollutants, several analytical techniques have been developed, including highly sensitive, selective, fast, low-cost, simple to use, and accurate sensors. The detection methods can be mainly classified into three categories: spectroscopic, electrochemical, and optical sensors. The detection of various pollutants, their concentration ranges, and their detection limits using different sensors with different compositions are presented. There are now well-defined nano-sensors with a variety of forms and functionalities thanks to recent advances in material science, which have rekindled this subject. Semiconductors, MXenes, noble metal nanoparticles, and porous nanomaterials have been used in sensor development. With various devices that have the proper functionalization, this chapter briefly introduces the most current developments in heavy metals and dyes sensing. Additionally, the efficient simultaneous identification of binary and multi-mixed samples was studied. The difficulties and the direction of this era’s future are finally discussed.