Fabrication and development of nanomaterial-based screen-printed electrochemical sensing technology for the detection of potentially toxic elements in water

Neethipathi, Deepan Kumar (2026) Fabrication and development of nanomaterial-based screen-printed electrochemical sensing technology for the detection of potentially toxic elements in water. PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

Electrochemical sensing technology is predominantly used to detect and monitor potentially toxic elements in water. Carbonous-based new screen-printed-based electrochemical sensors were built and further modified with interesting nanomaterials for the detection of heavy metal ions using various electrochemical techniques. As a vast amount of research work has been done in this research area, there are many practical issues in handling them for infield application. Even exhibiting a reasonable performance in the approach towards real field applications, A majority of electrochemical sensors reported have never left the laboratory conditions even while providing advantages over expensive conventional sensing system and their methods. The work focuses on guiding beginners approaching the research field of the printed electrochemical sensor and provides an in-depth understanding of a step-by-step approach to sensor fabrication, sensor characterisation, data collecting, data processing, and data analysis and further proceeds towards building the bridge between the technical gap between using the laboratory-based and field practicality application.

The work described in this thesis majorly includes 1) fabricating new printed electrochemical sensors for the detection of potentially toxic elements such as Ag, Au, Cd, Co, Cu, Fe, Mn, and Pb ions in water using multiple electrochemical techniques; 2) Discussion on the precondition, and Postconditioning stages for the reusability of the sensor; 3) An insight on pulsed anodic stripping voltammetry and the requirement of optimisation between the deposition and condition stages for the reproducibility of the printed sensor; and 4) Different nanomaterials such as molybdenum disulphide, graphitic carbonic nitride, Zinc oxide, and a mixture of Titanium dioxide and Magnesium oxide were infused with the screen-printed carbon electrode as a working sensing electrode for the detection of targeted analyte with excellent sensitivity and selectivity among interfering akin analyte ions.

A comparison of sensor performance between conventional and printed electrochemical sensors was executed to achieve improved sensing performance. Two Arduino-based readout equipments were developed as sensing technology for low-cost potentiostats, and they were further incorporated with the nanomaterial developed for field deployments with two unique electrochemical techniques, i.e., chronoamperometric and Voltammetric detection.

• Item Type: Thesis (PhD)
• Qualification Level: Doctoral
• Colleges/Schools: College of Science and Engineering > School of Geographical and Earth Sciences
• Supervisor's Name: Bass, Dr. Adrian, Scott, Professor Marian and Smith, Professor Cindy
• Date of Award: 2026
• Depositing User: Theses Team
• Unique ID: glathesis:2026-85960
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 09 Jun 2026 15:22
• Last Modified: 09 Jun 2026 15:22
• Thesis DOI: 10.5525/gla.thesis.85960
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/85960

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