The modern role of smartphones in analytical chemistry

Nowadays, in situ analysis attracts the interests and becomes one of the main purposes in analytical chemistry. Design of portable analysis devices facilitates reaching this goal. An ideal analysis system contains different parts enabling extraction, detection and quantification of target analytes. Preparation of a portable quantification approach is a bottle neck in such system creation. Common lab analysis instruments do not have the transportation ability and using these facilities limits the complete in situ analysis. Smartphones are the modern life phenomena and their usage becomes more widespread, every day. Their abilities and features are also swiftly developed. There are several strategies making the smartphone a suitable quantifier. This paper provides an overview of the currently applications of smartphones in analytical chemistry. Different applications of smartphones including optical detection (colorimetric, fluorescence, chemiluminescence, bioluminescence, and photoluminescence detections, pixelation as well as label-free detection), electrochemical detection, barcode reading, chemometric applications and smartphone imaging with fluorescence microscopy were classified and advantages and disadvantages of each approach were investigated. This modern common item could be a new part of analytical chemistry.