Materials for chemical sensing /

Materials for Chemical Sensing, by Paixão (chemistry, Univ. of São Paulo, Brazil) and Reddy (applied analytical chemistry, Univ. of Surrey, UK), provides a current overview of chemical sensing techniques with special emphasis on nano-structured devices. The book is arranged as a compilation of individual chapters written by different researchers. Despite this fact, the book is surprisingly coherent in terms of being well organized and containing chapters that relate to each other. Chapters 1 and 2 are introductory chapters describing the general principles of chemical sensors, as well as various ways to collect and extract the information by optical and electrochemical techniques. The following chapters focus on specific types of sensors. Each chapter is well written and most contain drawings and pictures that are of high quality. However, sometimes the pictures are too small, and it is difficult to read the given information. Each chapter includes an extensive list of references. Unfortunately, the table of contents does not have further details about the subchapter topics; also, the listed index is rather concise. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above; faculty and professionals. --Herbert Giesche, Alfred University