Skip to main content

PERSPECTIVE article

Front. Sens.
Sec. Sensor Devices
Volume 6 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsens.2025.1513701
This article is part of the Research Topic Nanomaterials for Affordable Biomedical Devices, Environmental and Energy Applications View all articles

Making nanomaterial-enabled nitrate sensors useful for real water systems: User-centric design perspectives

Provisionally accepted
Shelby Defeo Shelby Defeo *Samuel Erickson Samuel Erickson Maria F Perez Mendoza Maria F Perez Mendoza Alexia Cooper Alexia Cooper Bruce Barrios Bruce Barrios Zachary Malone Zachary Malone Ryan D Baxter Ryan D Baxter Sayantani Ghosh Sayantani Ghosh Thomas C Harmon Thomas C Harmon
  • University of California, Merced, Merced, United States

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Water quality monitoring is essential for identifying risks to environmental and human health.Nitrate monitoring is of particular importance, as its anthropogenic point and nonpoint sources are common globally and have deleterious effects on water quality and usability as well as aquatic ecosystem health. Standard methods for assessing nitrate concentrations in water generally involve laboratory techniques, as methods available for field testing face significant tradeoffs between cost, precision, and portability. Given its relatively ubiquitous nature and the widespread regulation of nitrate pollution, it is a prime target for sensor development. The growing field of nanomaterials (e.g., nanoparticles, nanotubes, and 2-dimensional materials) offers the potential to eliminate these tradeoffs through a new generation of field-ready nitrate sensors. However, transitioning nano-sensors from the lab to the field remains challenging. In this perspective we examine the challenges of lab-to-field transition of nano-sensors for nitrate, highlighting the

    Keywords: Monitoring, nutrient, pollution, contamination, user, Technology, device, field

    Received: 18 Oct 2024; Accepted: 05 Feb 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Defeo, Erickson, Perez Mendoza, Cooper, Barrios, Malone, Baxter, Ghosh and Harmon. 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) or licensor 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: Shelby Defeo, University of California, Merced, Merced, United States

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.