Low-dimensional fluorescent sensors for nitro explosive detection: A review

Rapid ultrasensitive detection of explosives has tremendous demand due to concerns for home security as well as environmental protection and human health. By virtue of their portability and perception through the naked eye, fluorescence-based explosive sensing has been widely used for sensing explosives in water, organic solvents, and vapor phase detection. Nanomaterials have proved to be key players in sensor technology because of their inherent optical properties, exceptional surface chemistry, unique wavelength tunability, and high quantum yield (QY) that combine their selective sensing ability with a shallow limit of detection (LOD) and quick response times. This review article sheds light on various sensing mechanisms based on fluorescence quenching for explosive detection, with a focus on low-dimensional fluorescent nanomaterials reported in the past decade. Various luminescent zero-dimensional nanomaterials such as Quantum Dots, Carbon-based nanomaterials, Metal nanoclusters (NC), Metal oxide nanoparticles, upconversion nanoparticles (UCNP), and nanofibers from one-dimensional nanomaterials have been included and briefly discussed in this review.