Review on Nanomaterial-based Electrochemical Aptasensors for Heavy Metal Detection in Food

Heavy metal ions are highly toxic contaminants in food and environment, which can easily cause foodborne diseases and irreversible damage to human being. There are several limitations in traditional detection methods for heavy metal ions such as time consuming and expensive, so it’s urgent to develop a rapid technology for heavy metal detection in food. Due to their rapid, high sensitivity and specificity, nanomaterial-based electrochemical aptasensors are perspective in real-time detection of heavy metal ions. This paper summarize the characters of metallic nanomaterials (such as gold nanoparticles), metal oxide nanomaterials (such as Fe₃O₄ nanoparticles), and carbon nanomaterials (such as carbon nanotubes and graphene) and then review the application of electrochemical aptasensors based on nanomaterials in heavy metal detection (mainly lead (II), mercury (II), arsenic (III) and cadmium (II)), in order to provide inspiration for the development of heavy metal detection methods.