Tailoring of active metal sites on nanozymes for chemiluminescence assays: From nanoparticles to isolated atoms

Natural enzymes usually serve as the sensitive luminescent probes. Nevertheless, several inherent drawbacks including low cost-efficiency and low environmental tolerance avoidably retard the further application on chemiluminescence-related platforms. Nowadays, various nanomaterials-based artificial enzyme mimics feature with low cost, ease of preparation and satisfactory catalytic activity and therefore exhibit great potential as the substitutes of natural enzymes. Various metal species (isolated atoms, clusters and nanoparticles) on nanozymes show the distinctive catalytic influences on luminescent analysis. In the Review, the corresponding catalytic mechanism of diverse active sites including nanoparticles, metal clusters, isolated atoms and synergistic sites were thoroughly clarified. Moreover, the specific synthetic strategies for various sorts of corresponding sites including reduction reaction, coprecipitation strategy, coordination binding, doping method, defect design and pyrolysis treatment were systemically introduced. Future perspectives may contribute to the better tailoring of the catalytic performances of different metal entities as ideal luminescent probes in next-generation chemiluminescence assays.