Review—Recent Advances of Signal Amplified Smart Conjugated Polymers for Optical Detection on Solid Support

Among several detection techniques, fluorescence based optical sensors are regarded as superior owing to distinct features like simplicity, remarkable sensitivity and prompt signal response time. Signal amplification remains most effective strategy to further boost the performance of such sensors. Thanks to the unique light–harvesting and energy transfer properties of conjugated polymers (CPs) which make them as promising and key candidates for achieving proficient sensing through amplified fluorescence signal. Owing to such remarkable properties, past decade has witnessed numerous CPs based optical sensors and devices for monitoring of various species. In this review, we first introduce CPs and highlight their exclusive characteristics. Then, the superiority of CPs over small molecule based sensors has been demonstrated along with thorough discussion on underlying sensing mechanism. Afterwards, it is described how solid state sensing using CPs dominates over solution based sensing in terms of sensitivity. Later on, CP-amplified fluorescence detection of some explosives, pollutants, biomarker etc. on solid support has been summarized by shedding light on some recent representative papers. Finally, the current challenges and future prospective for advancement of the respective research area has been discussed.