The µ-PADs have been acknowledged as an efficient analytical platform to monitor and detect various contaminants present in the environment. Paper-based devices have always been a choice raw material for several technologies as they aid in developing biodegradable, cost-effective, and readily available units with easily driven and changeable flow rates, and the ability to store reagents. In comparison to conventional analytical systems such as capillary electrophoresis, high-performance liquid chromatography, and gas and liquid mass spectroscopy, the use of µ-PADs brings more significant results in pesticide detection. This chapter discussed the strategies that are commonly used to detect pesticides which are double-catalytic amplification, UV-induced fluorescence spectroscopy, ratiometric fluorescence imaging (based on wavelength intensities to detect variation in the native environment), electrochemical sensing, electrospray ionization, and competitive-inhibiting reaction.
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Microfluidic devices are the analytical platform that processes small proportions of fluids (unit), utilizing channels having dimensions ranging from 1-100 micrometers. Microfluidic devices have emerged from the combination of principles and technologies from various already existing areas, such as physics, and chemistry. biology, microelectronics, material science, and fluid dynamics (Niculescu et al., 2021). Since the microfluidic devices cover various domains so they can preferably be used for precise, sensitive detection of the desired target molecule in the provided sample. These microfluidic units are commonly made up of polymers (Hoehr et al., 2019), glass (Hwang et al., 2019), inorganic entities (Kane et al., 2020), silicon (Akita et al., 2020), ceramics (Liang et al., 2021), and paper (Walgama et al., 2021). Of all these, paper-based microfluidic devices (µ-PADs) offer a green and sustainable approach to developing economical, biodegradable, non-toxic, and easily available analytical platforms to sense analyte (Tian et al., 2018). Compared to typical analytical systems such as capillary electrophoresis, high-performance liquid chromatography, and gas and liquid mass spectroscopy, the utilization of µ-PADs brings forth remarkable results in target detection. The capillary action in the µ-PADs allows smooth movement of sample solution through the channels along with tunable and optimized flow rate to accurately embed the particles of the sample over the paper for detection purposes (Dabbagh et al., 2021). For over a decade, µ-PADs have been used to detect analytes in several fields, including biomedical treatments (Chakraborty, Kumar, and Sen, 2018; Lim et al, 2019) environmental monitoring (Kasoju et al., 2020), and industrial operations (Nak et al., 2020). One such use of µ-PADs has been acknowledged to screen pesticides in the environment.