Let's Talk about Slime; or Why Biofouling Needs More Attention in Sensor Science

Although there is a growing demand for new sensors for environmental monitoring, biofouling continues to plague current sensors and sensing networks. As soon as a sensor is placed in water, the formation of a biofilm begins. Once a biofilm is established, reliable measurements are often no longer possible. Although current biofouling mitigation strategies can slow the biofouling process, a biofilm will eventually develop on or near the sensing surface. While antibiofouling strategies are being continuously developed, the complexity of the biofilm community structure and the surrounding environment means that there is unlikely to be a single solution that will minimize biofilms on all environmental sensors. Thus, antibiofouling research often focuses on optimizing a specific biofilm mitigation approach for a given sensor, application, and environmental condition. While this is practical from the standpoint of a sensor developer, it makes the comparison of different mitigation strategies difficult. In this Perspective, we discuss the application of different biofouling mitigation strategies to sensing and then explore the need for the sensor community to adopt standard protocols to increase the comparability of the biofouling mitigation approaches and help sensor developers identify the most appropriate strategy for their system.