Recent developments on fluorescent hybrid nanomaterials for metal ions sensing and bioimaging applications: A review

The integration of fluorescent nanomaterials (FNMs) with analytical tools has gained much more attention in analytical and bioanalytical sciences due to their surface chemistry, high quantum yield and good photostability as compare to the fluorescent organic dyes. Till date, various fluorescent hybrid nanomaterials such as carbon dots (CDs), quantum dots (QDs), metal nanoclusters (NCs) and MXenes have been widely used as fluorescent probes for the simple, rapid and real-time quantification of various metal ions from the diverse environmental matrices and bio-imaging of cells at cellular level. This review highlights the advances of fluorescent nanomaterials-based analytical approaches for the analysis of wide range of metal ions with high selectivity, sensitivity and low detection limits. The synthetic strategies, operating conditions and their analytical characteristics are discussed and summarized in Tables. Lastly, the future outlook for the development of FNMs-based analytical approaches for sensing and bioimaging is also discussed.