Versatile fullerenes as sensor materials

Abstract

The last century outstanding discovery of fullerenes (or C60), as they are popularly called ‘buckyball’ structured molecules with icosahedral spherical structure, consists of 60 sp2-hybridized carbon atoms. These fullerenes have created immense applications in various fields, such as catalysts, sensors, photocatalysts, energy production, and storage materials. Fullerenes because of their improved conductivity, charge transfer, and photophysical properties have gained considerable attention, particularly in sensor area. The activity of sensors depends upon the interactions between fullerene and the sensing material. Among all the types of fullerenes, C60 has been extensively used. This review is an attempt to cover different aspects of fullerene-based sensing devices, wherein fullerenes act as important component (s) of the sensor device because of their electron-accepting properties. We will discuss the fullerene-based sensors for diverse applications as strain/gas sensors, electrochemical sensors, and optical sensors as much effort has been recently made to detect different analytes such as gases, volatile organic compounds, metal ions, anions, and biomolecules.