Functional porous material-based sensors for food safety

Food contamination may occur at all stages from farm to fork, and these contaminants are characterized by wide variety, trace amounts, and are susceptible to interference from complex food matrix during detection. The development of reliable food safety sensors is required for accurate, timely and convenient monitoring of food contaminants. Importantly, the detection performance of sensors largely informed by underlying material design. Among advanced materials, functional porous materials have drawn widespread attention on account of high surface area, adjustable pore size and skeletons, and ease of functionalization. Furthermore, porous structures provide micro-environment for the interaction between active sites and analyte, making them ideal candidates for both sensing and adsorption fields. Recently, functional porous material-based sensing methods have provided new ideas in rapid and efficient determination of food contaminants. This review summarizes the application of functional porous materials as sensing platforms in optical and electrical sensors, and their detecting performances in determining various food contaminants. Corresponding synthesis strategies of different types of porous materials and sensing mechanisms of porous material-based sensors are also mentioned. Finally, this paper puts forward and discusses the challenges and opportunities faced by food safety sensors based on functional porous materials, and development directions are also proposed briefly from different angles.