Metal organic frameworks for biosensing applications: A bibliometric analysis (2015-2025)

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have become very versatile platforms on which biosensing applications may be developed on the basis of tunable porosity, surface area, structural diversity, and functional versatility. In the last decade, fast developments in the areas of MOF synthesis, nanozyme conjugation, and electrochemical sensors have greatly enlarged their use in clinical diagnostics, environmental analysis and food safety testing. A systematic bibliometric review was included in this study to assess the changes in global research trends in MOF-based biosensing between the period of 2015 to 2025. The information was obtained in the Scopus database, which provided 2664 research articles following a systemic screening. VOSviewer was used to create bibliometric networks to examine the growth of publications, distribution of journals, funding patterns, country and institutional authorship, author collaboration, keyword co-occurrence and co-cite patterns. The findings show that there is a significant and steady rise in the number of publications annually, especially after 2019, which is a sign of more active research in the sphere. China was the most productive participant, as it contributed more than 80 percent of the total publications, and it was mainly facilitated by the national funding institutions. The search of the keyword clusters revealed five key thematic domains, namely electrochemical biosensing, nanozyme-based catalytic sensing, fluorescence and luminescence detection, biomarker diagnostics, and material synthesis strategies. Co-citation analysis also indicated early research on MOF chemistry and artificial enzyme systems as the intellectual basis of the subject. This paper gives a systematic review of the history, collaborative environment, and future perspectives in MOF biosensing. The results can inform researchers, funders and policymakers on the future interdisciplinary and translational efforts in new advanced biosensing technologies.