Recent advances and future trends on molecularly imprinted polymer-based fluorescence sensors with luminescent carbon dots

Abstract

One of the pressing concerns in analytical chemistry is the construction of selective and sensitive sensors to detect trace analytes in complicated samples. Nowadays, molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) that play an important role in most sensing systems are created by molecular imprinting technology (MIT) with tailor-made and synthetic recognition sites, which are complementary in functional groups, size, and shape to the target molecule. Fluorescent carbon dots (CDs), as a new class of carbon-based nanomaterials, have shown simple synthesis, low cost, excellent optical features, great aqueous solubility, and good biocompatibility. Due to the unique properties of recognition specificity, structure predictability, and application universality, the coupling of MIP/CDs with fluorescence detection has attracted great research interest. Accordingly, this review article mainly focuses on the senor designs, sensing mechanisms, and properties of MIP/CDs based fluorescent sensors to various target analytes in most recent years. Finally, we discuss possible future challenges, improvements, and perspectives.