(1. Institute of New Carbon Materials, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China)
(2. School of Materials Science and Engineering, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China)
(3. Key Laboratory of Interface Science and Engineering in Advanced Materials, Ministry of Education, Taiyuan 030024, China)
The highly selective and sensitive detection of trace analytes in complicated matrix is of great significance to environmental protection and food safety. So far, traditional detection methods such as chromatography can realize high sensitivity detection. However, the detection processes suffer from some defects to some extent in selectivity, sample pretreatment process, and maintenance cost. Therefore, it is urgent to establish a simple and rapid detection method with high selectivity and high sensitivity. By coupling carbon quantum dots (CQDs) for fluorescence detection with molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) for molecular recognition, an efficient CQDs-based molecularly imprinted (CQDs-MIPs) fluorescence detection system is constructed. The system has facile synthesis route, low cost, high sensitivity, high selectivity, and strong anti-interference ability, and thus plays an important role in the detection of extremely low concentration analytes in complex matrix. MIPs can selectively recognize and enrich the target molecules owing to the recognition sites highly matching the target molecules. As one class of the new carbonbased fluorescent nanomaterials, CQDs are environment-friendly, non-toxic, harmless, and have excellent optical properties, good water solubility and biocompatibility, exhibiting irreplaceable advantages in the field of molecular detection based on their fluorescence response. This review mainly focuses on the construction strategies and sensing mechanism of CQDs-MIPs detection systems, and their application progresses in environmental, food and clinical fields in recent years. In addition, the future development of CQDs-MIPs is forecasted.