Carbon materials have been used extensively in the electroanalytical field in the development of modified electrodes to be employed as sensor platforms for different analytical targets.

The advantages of these materials are, primarily, their very low cost and extensive availability. Moreover, carbon-based materials are adaptable and versatile. In fact, the possibility to prepare, dope and functionalize them with different surface modifiers and in various ways allows the creation of materials with different characteristics and properties according to the needs of the analytical target to be determined.

The main advantages brought by the use of these materials for electroanalytical purposes are: a high surface–volume ratio, wide potential windows in aqueous and non-aqueous media, chemical inertness, miniaturization, efficient mass transport, stable and low background currents, accuracy (precision and trueness¹ ), selectivity, sensitivity, reproducibility, low limits of detection, long lifetimes for real-time detection in real matrices, fast response, low fabrication costs, robustness, and portability. Moreover, the great simplicity in the preparation of electrodes and sensors allows their use in different fields with no need for expertise or lengthy training, as is the case with screen-printed electrodes (SPE), which have completely changed electroanalytical potentialities.^2–8  The principal methodologies of deposition and preparation of carbon-based modified electrodes are described in Section 10.2 starting from simpler ones (drop casting, spin coating) to the more complex (CVD, pyrolysis, screen printing) to reach the final challenge of recent years: the preparation of sensors on paper supports.^6,9–14