**Abstract**

Since the development of the first biosensor reported, biosensor has received considerable attention due to its high selectivity and sensitivity. Biosensors are highly pursued in order to meet the growing demands and challenges in a large number of analytic applications such as medical diagnosis, food safety control, environmental monitoring, or even military defense. Due to the unique physical, chemical, mechanical and electrical properties, nanomaterials have been widely investigated for their ability and used to fabricate sensors. High surface to volume ratio, good stability, excellent electrocatalytic properties of the nanomaterials plays an important role in the sensitive and selective detection of biomolecules. The synthesis of new nanomaterials with different properties is increasingly common in order to improve these counted properties of nanomaterials. This chapter gives an overview of the importance of the development of novel nanomaterials based biosensors technologies. The use of different funtionalized carbon nanomaterilas, metal oxide nanoparticles, metal nanoparticles, polymeric nanoparticles, quantum dots, graphene sheets and other novel nanomaterials in biosensor technology, and their innovations and advantages are discussed.

**Keywords:** novel nanomaterials, biosensor, biorecognition, nanosensors

### **1. Introduction**

A biosensor device is defined as a biological or bio-inspired receptor unit with unique specificities for analytes. These analytes are generally of biological origin. One of the challenges in biosensor development is that efficient signal capture can be achieved with biological recognition. Novel nanomaterials represent a rapidly developing field in bioanalysis applications. The sensitivity and performance of biosensors can be improved by using nanomaterials. Typical schemeatic presentation of a biosensor is illuatrated in **Figure 1**.

With the development of nanotechnology, many new nanomaterials such as gold nanostructure, magnetic nanoparticles, nanozymes, and carbon-based nanomaterials have been synthesized [1]. Nanomaterials have been widely applied in the areas of invivo imaging [2], cancer treatment [3], drug delivery [4], catalysis [5], bacteriostasis [6], and so on. Due to the outstanding physical and chemical properties of nanomaterials, nanomaterial-based biosensors have been developed [7].

In this chapter, synthesis, properties and possible applications of these materials in biosensors were examined. The high sensitivity and selectivity of nanomaterialbased biosensors have led to major advances in the development of new methodologies for early detection. Due to its submicron dimensions, it allows simple and fast

**Figure 1.** *Schematic presentation of a biosensor.*

analysis in vivo. Their reactivity, toughness and other properties are also dependent on their unique shape, size and structure. In addition, the application of nanomaterials to biosensors provides different detection limits depending on the samples to be analyzed and facilitates the adjustment of the sensitivity level according to the needs.
