ABSTRACT
The detection of organic pollutants and their concentrations in soil, water, and air is essential for adequate environmental monitoring and analysis. There are recent needs for developing near-real-time environmental sensing and monitoring platforms for water quality with innovative algorithms to aid in natural/anthropogenic hazard responses (e.g., the Deepwater Horizon oil spill incident in 2010 and West Virginia chemical spill in 2014) and ecosystem restoration assessment. Among the many hydrophobic organic compounds, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) have been of great concern because of their carcinogenic and mutagenic propertiesparticularly four-to six-ring compounds [1, 2]. PAHs are neutral, nonpolar, and hydrophobic organic molecules comprised of two or more fused benzene rings. They are essentially insoluble and have very low vapor pressures; therefore, their measurement in aquatic environments is challenging, and the procedures for in situ sensors for PAHs have not yet been thoroughly explored.
