Thanks to the development of simple and composite, often nanostructured materials, electrochemical sensors constitute powerful and versatile tools for monitoring physical and chemical quantities in a number of different fields. Specific attention is devoted by the research group to environmental, as well as to food matrices. In particular, electrochemical sensors can be suitable to collect quantitative data, when developed in order to possess selectivity and sensitivity characteristics , as well as to constitute artificial sensing systems (so-called electronic tongues), when complemented by suitable chemometric tools. In both cases, the goal may be either that of estimating a single, specific quantity, or to classify a given sample within a given class, according to a wide choice of possible criteria.
The presence within the group of expertise in different sectors allows us to take care of all different aspects of the development of a sensing system, in the frame of a collaborative, shared work of research. The work starts from the synthesis of the most suitable material, and relevant characterization by the different morphologic, spectroscopic, electrochemical techniques, as far as the analytical performances of the realized sensing system are defined, according to most rigorous criteria. The developed sensors should be capable to work in untreated real matrices, making them preferable in respect to complex analytical methodologies that most often even require pretreatment of the sample.
