Nanomaterials-driven innovative electrochemiluminescence aptasensors in reporting food pollutants

As one of the most concerned issues of public health and food safety, food pollution has attracted great attention. The low-cost, reliable and efficient warning-early of food pollutants has become one of the most alarming challenges but effective strategies for establishing proper management of food pollutants, safeguarding food safety and public health. In this background, the key assurance for supervision is the strong creativity and sustainable progress of monitoring technology. With the progress and development of nanomaterials, photo/electric sensing and nucleic acid aptamer recognition technology, their integration-driven emerging electrochemiluminescence (ECL) aptamer sensing technology has shown the promising potentials in reporting the residual levels of various food pollutants towards practicality, economy, and sensitivity. Especially in recent years, the use of ECL aptamer sensing technology to study the detection and application of food pollutants has been increasing year by year. In order to better boost the advancement of this field, we reviewed the latest progress of nanomaterials-driven ECL aptasensors with nanomaterials as the active elements and aptamers as recognition elements for quantitative detecting the residual food pollutants (e.g., pesticides, heavy metal ions, toxins, antibiotics, pathogenic bacteria, etc.) in food and agriculture-related matrices in the past 5 years, dissected the inevitable challenges and discussed the future prospects. We anticipated this current and systematically presented review would provide essential insights into the development the nanomaterials-driven ECL aptasensor-driven regulatory systems, commercial instant aptasensors, and validated effective warning-early mechanisms for the detection and control of the residual food pollutants, thereby safeguarding food safety and public health.