Applications of hybrid nanoparticles to improve environmental monitoring

Abstract

Environmental pollution is nowadays a serious concern, requiring an adequate monitoring of hazardous compounds, such as heavy metals, pesticides, and other organic compounds, and pharmaceutical drugs. However, due to the low concentration of some of these pollutants in environmental aqueous samples and the complexity of these samples, the major challenge in this field is the selective isolation of target pollutants and their identification and quantification by feasible analytical equipment. Among a wide array of solid-phase extraction (SPE) adsorbents that have been studied for this purpose, the application of hybrid magnetic nanoparticles (HMNPs) has been considered a hot topic and largely investigated in the past decade. This chapter reviews the literature of the past decade dealing with the application of HMNPs, namely, MNPs combined with polymers and carbon materials, used in SPE with the goal of preconcentrating pollutants from aqueous environmental samples to improve their environmental monitoring.