Ming-Shui Yao
Wei-Wei Wu2- 1Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences, Kyoto University Institute for Advanced Study, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan
- 2School of Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, Interdisciplinary Research Center of Smart Sensors, Xidian University, Shaanxi, China
- 3College of Materials Science and Engineering, Chongqing University, Chongqing, China
- 4Texas A and M University, College Station, TX, United States
- 5Department of Chemistry, College of Science, Shanghai University, Shanghai, China
Editorial on the Research Topic
Low-Dimension Sensing Nanomaterials
Sensing is the art of seeing things invisible (Fourkas, 2011; Yao et al., 2021). Specifically, sensors help human beings collect chemical/physical/bio-stimulus or variations in the environment, and transduce them into readable signals that can be further processed and analyzed (Hu W. et al., 2019; Broza et al., 2019; Xie et al.). In the last 2 decades, the intensive studies on low dimension nanomaterials have indicated the advantages of such materials on developing new sensors with ultrahigh sensitivity, specificity, low-power consumption, multi-functionality, and miniaturized size (Choi and Kim, 2018; Ge et al.; Meng et al., 2019; Qiu and Tang, 2020; Yang et al., 2020).
The Frontiers research topic “Low-Dimension Sensing Nanomaterials” comprises a collection of original research and review articles dealing with the synthesis, chemistry, and applications of low-dimension sensing nanomaterials. This special issue consists of 15 research articles and five mini-reviews, reflecting recent developments on sensing materials, data processing, and theoretical calculations. The collected papers cover the broad applications of sensors in fields of environmental monitoring/cleaning (Li B. et al.; Dong et al.; Luo et al.; Tang et al.), disease diagnosis (Cai et al.; Wang H. et al.), biosensing (Song et al.; Wang Z. et al.), public security affairs (Li Y. et al.), etc.
The rich history of sensing materials has made it possible to predict with a relatively high degree of confidence what sensing performances might result if certain well-studied materials are used individually or jointly. However, there are still many worthwhile directions to be pursued to overcome the difficulty to fulfill the “4S” requirements (i.e., sensitivity (response), selectivity, speed (response/recovery time) and stability) at the same time. Firstly, the newly emerging sensing materials (e.g., metal organic framework/porous coordination polymers (MOF/PCPs), black phosphorus, covalent-organic frameworks (COFs), conducting polymers, Mxenes) or hybrid materials always bring new understanding of what the sensor can or cannot do (Hu Y. et al.; Cai et al.; Zhou et al.; Zhuo et al.), which can be further applied to guide the development of existed sensing materials. Secondly, the boosting developments of characterization techniques triggered various in-depth and fundamental studies on both atomic/nanoscale level structure-properties relationships and in-/ex-situ sensing mechanisms characterization (Hu Y. et al.; Shao et al.; Song et al.; Wang H. et al.; Jia et al.; Wu et al.). Its great challenge is how to move forward the qualitative measurements to quantitative measurements, summarize the individual cases into general rules via data processing, and thus guide the design of high performance sensors. Last but not the least, the theoretical calculations have contributed greatly to the understanding of sensing mechanisms in the past few decades (Ji et al., 2019; Zhu et al.). With the fast development of simulation theories and computing power, greater contributions on both confirmation and prediction can be expected.
We hope the contributions here can give the inquisitive reader a primer and a springboard that inspires further new ideas in this exciting and challenging research area, in which many more discoveries will be made.
Author Contributions
MY prepare this editorial. MY, WW, WZ, JP and JX discussed the editorial.
Conflict of Interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
References
Broza, Y. Y., Zhou, X., Yuan, M., Qu, D., Zheng, Y., Vishinkin, R., et al. (2019). Disease detection with molecular biomarkers: from chemistry of body fluids to nature-inspired chemical sensors. Chem. Rev. 119, 11761–11817. doi:10.1021/acs.chemrev.9b00437
Choi, S.-J., and Kim, I.-D. (2018). Recent developments in 2D nanomaterials for chemiresistive-type gas sensors. Electron. Mater. Lett. 14, 221–260. doi:10.1007/s13391-018-0044-z
Fourkas, J. T. (2011). Nanosensing: the art of seeing things invisible. J. Phys. Chem. Lett. 2, 2945. doi:10.1021/jz201284e
Hu, W., Wan, L., Jian, Y., Ren, C., Jin, K., Su, X., et al. (2019). Electronic noses: from advanced materials to sensors aided with data processing. Adv. Mater. Technol. 4, 1800488. doi:10.1002/admt.201800488
Ji, H., Zeng, W., and Li, Y. (2019). Gas sensing mechanisms of metal oxide semiconductors: a focus review. Nanoscale 11, 22664–22684. doi:10.1039/c9nr07699a
Meng, Z., Stolz, R. M., Mendecki, L., and Mirica, K. A. (2019). Electrically-Transduced chemical sensors based on two-dimensional nanomaterials. Chem. Rev. 119, 478–598. doi:10.1021/acs.chemrev.8b00311
Qiu, Z., and Tang, D. (2020). Nanostructure-based photoelectrochemical sensing platforms for biomedical applications. J. Mater. Chem. B 8, 2541–2561. doi:10.1039/C9TB02844G
Yang, T., Liu, Y., Wang, H., Duo, Y., Zhang, B., Ge, Y., et al. (2020). Recent advances in 0D nanostructure-functionalized low-dimensional nanomaterials for chemiresistive gas sensors. J. Mater. Chem. C 8, 7272–7299. doi:10.1039/D0TC00387E
Keywords: low-dimension, sensor, nanomaterials, data processing, theoretical calculations
Citation: Yao M-S, Wu W-W, Zeng W, Pang J-D and Xu J-Q (2021) Editorial: Low-Dimension Sensing Nanomaterials. Front. Chem. 9:608327. doi: 10.3389/fchem.2021.608327
Received: 20 September 2020; Accepted: 18 February 2021;
Published: 12 April 2021.
Edited and reviewed by:
Zoe Pikramenou, University of Birmingham, United KingdomCopyright © 2021 Yao, Wu, Zeng, Pang and Xu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Ming-Shui Yao, mingshuiyao@gmail.com