Clean water is essential for life on earth; however, contamination of water resources by domestic sewage releases remains a concern for human health. This impact is greater in developing agricultural systems, industry, and urbanization but with a lack of investments in wastewater treatment. Newly developed sensors based on surface functionalization can detect these viruses with higher sensitivity than frequently used methods.

The benefits:

• high sensitivity to particular viruses
• high recovery rate of the sensor
• cost-efficient

Feevale University in Brazil is a lighthouse in water quality management and pollution health impact due to pathogens in environmental waters. They want to monitor aquatic microbiological pollution.

Roana Melina de Oliveira Hansen is associated professor at SDU, MCI. She is working with surface functionalization for sensing.

In a collaboration Roana worked with a PhD student from Feevale University. The PhD student worked in sensor selectivity, functionalizing magnetic particles with an antibody to the pollution pathogen targets. She tested the method in environmental waters in Brazil and demonstrated good selectivity and sensitivity in pathogen detection. A valuable application for surface functionalization.