Green Carbon Materials for the Analysis of Environmental Pollutants

Green carbon materials (GCMs) have attracted great attention as they have unique mechanical, optical, and electrical properties that make them suitable for the development of the next generation of miniature, low-power, and mobile sensors. In this review paper, an attempt has been made to explore green carbon materials where their synthesis methods, conjugation with other types of nanomaterials to form nanocomposites, thus combining different properties into one single novel material, and environmental analysis applications are detailed. Green carbon materials have great significance in the analysis of environmental pollutants because they increase the effective area of an electrode, improve the rate of electron transfer between the analytes and the electrode, and help in catalysis, which in turn increases the efficacy of an electrochemical reaction, absorption, detection, and elimination. Moreover, functionalized green carbon materials when used in sensors for fast, economic environmental pollutant analysis are found to be highly sensitive to monitoring heavy metals and other polluting impurities in air, water sources, soils, etc. This review covers research and advancements in a broad span from 2013 to 2021, and some of the leading and fascinating research articles from the early years of the century have also been incorporated.