Sensors based on conducting polymers for the analysis of food products

Abstract

Quality and safety have become important food attributes within the last years. With the expansion of food industry and food fabrication on a big scale is not infrequent to found adulterant and contaminant on food, i.e. of harmful chemicals and microorganisms, which can cause consumer illness. Increasingly, the public authorities are charging the food industry to develop quality management systems and restructure the food inspection system to improve food quality and safety. However, contamination can be taking place during all steps of food manufacturing. For instance, even during storage, the products can experience a significant degradation in quality due to a variety of physical, chemical, and biological interactions. Consequently, fast and inexpensive ways to control the food freshness, contamination or adulteration are requested to keep the quality control. Thus, there is an increasing demand for analytical methods easily operate with highly sensitive, selective and accurate for determining compounds in foods in general. We present here a review about conducting polymers and their application on the development of electrical and electrochemical sensors for detection of contamination or adulteration in food samples.