Abstract
Although there is a growing demand for new sensors forenvironmentalmonitoring, biofouling continues to plague current sensors and sensingnetworks. As soon as a sensor is placed in water, the formation ofa biofilm begins. Once a biofilm is established, reliable measurementsare often no longer possible. Although current biofouling mitigationstrategies can slow the biofouling process, a biofilm will eventuallydevelop on or near the sensing surface. While antibiofouling strategiesare being continuously developed, the complexity of the biofilm communitystructure and the surrounding environment means that there is unlikelyto be a single solution that will minimize biofilms on all environmentalsensors. Thus, antibiofouling research often focuses on optimizinga specific biofilm mitigation approach for a given sensor, application,and environmental condition. While this is practical from the standpointof a sensor developer, it makes the comparison of different mitigationstrategies difficult. In this Perspective, we discuss the applicationof different biofouling mitigation strategies to sensing and thenexplore the need for the sensor community to adopt standard protocolsto increase the comparability of the biofouling mitigation approachesand help sensor developers identify the most appropriate strategyfor their system.