Emerging nanosensing technologies for the detection of β-agonists

Illegal usage of β-agonists as the animal growth promoters can lead to multiple harmful impacts to public health, thus detection of β-agonists at trace level in complex sample matrixes is of great importance. In recent years, emergence of advanced nanomaterials greatly facilitates the advancement of sensors in terms of sensitivity, specificity and robustness. Plenty of nanoparticles-based sensors have been developed for β-agonists determination. In this review, we comprehensively summarized the construction of emerging nanoparticles-based sensors (including colorimetric sensors, fluorescent sensors, chemiluminescent sensors, electrochemical sensors, electrochemiluminescent sensors, surface enhanced Raman scattering sensors, surface plasmon resonance sensors, quartz crystal microbalance sensors, etc.), and nanomaterial-based enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (nano-ELISA). Impressively, the applications of nanoparticles-based sensors and nano-ELISAs in the detection of β-agonists have also been summarized and discussed. In the end, future opportunities and challenges in the design construction of nanoparticles (NPs)-based sensors and their applications in β-agonist assay are tentatively proposed.