Abstract
Carbon nanomaterials offer a number of possibilities for sensing platforms. The ability to chemically functionalize the surfaces of the nano-carbon, using hybrid or nano-composite structures, can further enhance the material properties. Complementary to the addition of any requisite chemical or biochemical functionality, such enhancements can take the form of improved electrical, optical or morphological properties which improve the transduction capabilities of the carbon nano-material, or facilitate detection of the transduced signal, for example by improving charge transfer to detection electronics. Here we review the methods of producing hybrid and nano-composite carbon structures for sensing systems, highlighting the advantages of the functionalization in each case and benchmark their performance against existing carbon-only devices. Finally, we detail some of the recent applications of hybrid and nano-composite carbon technologies in a wide variety of sensor technologies.