Diamond: A New Chemical Sensor’s Best Friend?

Diamond materials in different forms, including single crystal, polycrystalline, or nanoparticles, feature a number of very attractive physical/chemical properties for the development of both chemical or biochemical sensors. In the last decade considerable work has been carried out to process diamond (seeding, etching, patterning, controlling surface chemistry, etc.) so that it has now become a serious candidate material for implementation in advanced sensor technologies. In this article we report on some of the work achieved by our team in this area, focusing more particularly on diamond based transducers used for the detection of small organic compounds, such as odorant molecules, both in the liquid or gas phase.