Magnetic nanoparticles for food hazard factors sensing: synthesis, modification and application

Foodborne diseases caused by food hazard factors (FHFs) seriously compromise human health and economy. Therefore, the establishment of rapid and accurate methods for the detection of FHFs is indispensable to ensuring food safety. Among the well-developed analytical technologies, biosensors are powerful tools for detecting FHFs in complex food matrices. Magnetic nanoparticles-based biosensors inherit the advantages of conventional biosensors as well as open a promising route toward sensitivity and accuracy enhancement. In the current review, we summarize the synthesis methods of MNPs, and further comprehensively introduce their modification by the biological and abiotic functional groups with illustrating their recognition mechanisms. The advances of MNPs-based biosensors for FHFs detection are also emphatically reviewed in this paper. The future perspectives of MNPs-based biosensors are finally presented. Furtherly improving the sensitivity and broadening application area of MNPs-based biosensors remains a challenging scientific problem. Future improvements should focus on developing green synthesis methods, conducting further research on recognition mechanisms, designing miniaturized and high-throughput analysis devices, and realizing intelligent sensing.