Electrochemical sensors and biosensors based on nanodiamonds: A review

Electrochemical sensors based on carbonaceous nanomaterials are widely used for the most diverse purposes, due to the excellent qualities that such nanomaterials present. Considering the different carbonaceous nanomaterials commonly used in electrochemical sensors, nanodiamonds have stood out due to their unique characteristics. Among them, the outstanding high resistance, wide potential window, low background current in aqueous or non-aqueous solutions, high chemical and electrochemical stability, biocompatibility, low toxicity, and excellent corrosion resistance can be highlighted. Furthermore, nanodiamonds can be combined with other materials to further improve the performance of the sensors. Therefore, electrochemical (bio)sensors based on nanodiamonds have been reported in the literature, covering the detection of a wide variety of species of interest, including organic compounds, pharmaceuticals, hormones, glucose, heavy metals, nitroaromatic explosives, pesticides, among others. With this, the present review article aims to demonstrate the potential use of nanodiamonds to highlight the importance of this material, present and discuss the various works reported in the literature and give some perspectives and ideas of possible uses considering the development of new sensing platforms.