Advances in sensors: the enabling roles of photocatalysis, polymer brushes and exotic characterization approaches

A transformative advance in the field of sensor technology has been the development of smart sensor systems. One major implication of smart sensor systems is the use of robust and reliable sensing devices. lt could appear to be trivial, but even the most intelligent system is completely useless if its sensing core does not work properly. For this reason, it is of paramount importance to develop highly efficient sensing platforms with self-calibrating, self-healing, self-compensating and selfcleaning properties. This is one of the most challenging and actual field of research, which benefited much from the "nanotechnology revolution", generating high promises especially for the development of miniaturized devices. This broad field crosses many different disciplines ranging from chemistry to physics to materials science, with a major role played by surface science. The scope of this Thesis is to explore three different, although converging, approaches to develop such kind of sensing platforms. The enabling roles of photocatalysis, polymer brushes and of exotic characterization techniques (such as positron annihilation spectroscopy) to reach this goal are discussed. Theoretical as well as highly applicative results are described, as products of a genuine curiosity-driven approach.