Aplicação de sensores eletroquímicos com (nano)materiais de carbono na área de Food Safety: uma revisão bibliográfica

Abstract

Food safety and food security are extremely relevant concepts worldwide, so they are covered in three of the seventeen sustainable development goals of the United Nations (UN) and such concepts start from the human right to have access to healthy food, sufficient for survival and safe. The UN estimates alarming numbers of people who fall ill or die from contaminated food. Among the contaminations are those from pesticides due to intoxication due to acute exposure, intentional adulterations of foods that are carried out in order to increase productivity or even prevent the product from being discarded due to inadequacy to the standards established by legislation and deadline validity; food contaminated by microorganisms such as fungi and bacteria, which can cause serious health consequences; and also the migration of components from packaging to food at undesirable levels. Having identified the health risks that these contaminants can generate, it is essential to have scientific techniques and methods as a means to guarantee the quality of what will be consumed. The use of electrochemical sensors modified with carbon (nano)materials has become a very promising approach in recent years due to their low cost, ease of handling and the possibility of performing on-site analysis. Carbon nanomaterials include carbon nanotubes, graphene, quantum dots, among others; are widely used in electrochemistry due to their excellent physicochemical properties such as chemical stability, mechanical strength and excellent electrical conductivity. In order to review the most recent electrochemical sensing techniques in the area of food safety using carbon (nano)materials, a review was carried out from academic works searched in databases using specific keywords and publication period so that it was possible to find articles that integrate the theme. It was noted that carbon nanomaterials have great potential in electrochemical sensing, in addition to showing compatibility with different types of inorganic materials such as metallic nanoparticles, phosphorene and zinc oxide, but also with organic materials and biomolecules such as polyaniline, aptamers and beeswax, highlighting the range of uses and possibilities of modification of working electrodes, leading to the development of increasingly sensitive methods that include the detection of a variety of contaminants found in the food production chain.