Electrochemiluminescence-based innovative sensors for monitoring the residual levels of heavy metal ions in environment-related matrices

Development of high-throughput ECL-based innovative sensors is of great significance to construct efficient warning-early mechanisms for achieving efficient environmental surveillance and traceability assay toward heavy metal ions. This review focuses on the progress of various ECL-based innovative sensors toward heavy metal ions in environment-related matrices, and discusses the current and future trends, including future commercialization. • ECL-based innovative sensors are promising tools in environmental surveillance of heavy metal ions. • Summarizing the principles in ECL-based innovative sensors for heavy metal ions monitoring in environmental media. • Profiling the advances in ECL-based innovative sensors for heavy metal ions. • Discussing the challenges and perspectives in ECL-based innovative sensors for environmental health. With the development of modern industrial technology, the residual heavy metal ions in environment-related matrices poses a serious threat to environmental and public health, because they could accumulate in human body and affect human health through the exposure of food chain. On account of this, it is of great significance to develop an efficient environmental surveillance and traceability assay toward heavy metal ions for thus establishing an efficient warning-early mechanism to safeguard environmental and public health. In this case, as an emerging technology, electrochemiluminescence (ECL)-based sensors have exhibited the promising potentials in various heavy metal ions monitoring with high sensitivity, near zero background signal, wide detection range, and low cost. To better promote the development of this field, we here summarized the recent progresses of the innovative ECL sensors for quantitative monitoring the residual levels of heavy metal ions ( e.g. , Hg 2+ , Pb 2+ , Cd 2+ , Cu 2+ , Ni 2+ , Co 2+ , Ag + , Cr 3+ , Cr 6+ , Fe 3+ , & their coexistence) in environment-related matrices, profiled the inevitable challenges, and discussed the future perspectives. We expected that this timely and systematic review might offer the significant insights to develop the ECL technique-driven novel management systems, commercial point-of-care sensors, and efficient warning-early mechanisms for monitoring and controlling the residual pollutions of heavy metal ions in environment-related matrices, thus ensuring environmental and public health.