Recent advances in the development of colorimetric analysis and testing based on aggregation-induced nanozymes

Colorimetric sensing strategies as a powerful point-of-care testing (POCT) tool have attracted significant interest in various chem/biosensing applications. Taking the excellent bare-eye-detectable signaling feature, nanozymes-based colorimetric sensors enable more potential applications and have been a new forefront in the colorimetric POCT analysis toward different target analytes. However, the low catalytic activity of nanozymes in most cases limits their practical application. Recent efforts demonstrate that the aggregation-induced nanozymes provide a general means to modulate nanozymes activity and enhance colorimetric sensing performances of some nanozymes-based colorimetric sensors. But there are few reports are explored to discuss and review such aggregation-induced nanozymes and their colorimetric sensing applications. To highlight the advances and progress in aggregation-induced nanozymes based colorimetric assays, we herein summary the fundamentals, classify and applications of this newly-developing field, focusing on the aggregation-induced activity enhancement of nanozymes (AIAE-nanozymes) with a significant “signal-on” feature and aggregation-induced activity inhibition of nanozymes (AIAI-nanozymes) with a dramatical “signal-off” characteristics. Finally, we also propose the current challenges and the future prospects on both AIAE-nanozymes and AIAI-nanozymes.