Engineering UiO-66 based architectures for electrochemical sensing: recent advances, analytical performance,...

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have attracted the scientific community for the development of electrochemical sensors towards the monitoring of environmental pollutants and biomedical diagnostic applications. In particular, zirconium (Zr) based UiO-66 MOF has emerged as promising candidate for electrochemical sensing applications. The UiO-66 exhibit tunable porosity, high surface area, chemical stability, abundant Zr active sites, and catalytic properties. In the past few years, UiO-66 and its hybrid composite materials were extensively utilized as sensing material for the fabrication of electrochemical sensors towards the quantification of antibiotics, heavy metal ions (HMI), food contaminants, biomarkers, pesticides, pathogens, neurotransmitters and biomolecules. This review article primarily focuses on the recent efforts in applying UiO-66 and hybrid composites as modifier for the development of electrochemical sensors. The synthesis methods for the fabrication of UiO-66 based materials have been briefly discussed. Furthermore, analytical performance, and sensing mechanism of the UiO-66 based electrochemical sensors have been described. The challenges such as scalability and reproducibility for the preparation of UiO-66 based materials have been discussed. Furthermore, limitations of the UiO-66 based electrochemical sensors for practical applications have been mentioned. The future perspectives for UiO-66 based electrochemical sensors have been proposed.