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Chemical and biological substances have been used as warfare agents by terrorists by varying degree of sophistication. It is critical that these agents be detected in real-time with high level of sensitively, specificity, and accuracy. Many different types of techniques and systems have been developed to detect these agents. But there are some limitations in these conventional techniques and systems. Limitations include the collection, handling and sampling procedures, detection limits, sample transfer, expensive equipment, personnel training, and detection materials. Due to the unique properties such as quantum effect, very high surface/volume ratio, enhanced surface reactivity, conductivity, electrical and magnetic properties of the nanomaterials offer great opportunity to develop very fast, sensitive, accurate and cost effective detection techniques and systems to detect chemical and biological (chem.-bio) warfare agents. Furthermore, surface modification of the materials is very easy and effective way to get functional or smart surfaces to be used as nano-biosensor platform. In that respect many different types of nanomaterials have been developed and used for the detection, remediation and protection, such as gold and silver nanoparticles, quantum dots, Nano chips and arrays, fluorescent polymeric and magnetic nanoparticles, fiber optic and cantilever based nanobiosensors, nanofibrillar nanostructures etc. This study summarizes preparation and characterization of nanotechnology based approaches for the detection of and remediation and protection against chem.-bio warfare agents.

Polymeric nanoparticles with magnetic properties can be potentially used in many fields such as biotechnology, separation processes, optoelectronic, catalysts and/or sensors, medical diagnosis and therapy. In this respect, biopolymers give promising trends due to their excellent biocompatibility and biodegradability. Therefore in this study, magnetic chitosan/Fe3O4 nanoparticles were prepared according to the procedure based on the ionic gelation of chitosan with tripolyphosphate anions. The formation of the particles was a result of the interaction between the negatively charged groups of the tripolyphosphate and the positively charged amino groups of chitosan. The prepared samples were observed by atomic force microscopy to obtain information about the morphology. The mean particle size of the nanoparticles was determined by dynamic light scattering measurements. Nanoparticles were spherical in shape with a particle size range of about 250–400 nm according to obtained data. Magnetic properties of the nanoparticles were determined by using ESR and VSM.