Breaking the time and space limitation of point-of-care testing strategies: Photothermometric sensors based on different photothermal agents and materials

[Display omitted] •A comprehensive review focusing on summary and elaboration of photothermometric POCT assays is presented for the first time.•The latest development of photothermometric POCT assays based on different photothermal agents and nanomaterials is firstly reviewed.•The sensing principles and advantages of the developed photothermometric POCT assays are systematically discussed according to the photothermal probe classification.•The practical applications of photothermometric POCT assays for different analytes detection with good breakthrough on analytical time and space limitations are dicussed. Photothermometric sensing strategies as a powerful point-of-care testing (POCT) method have attracted great interest in various chem/biosensing fields. Though considerable progresses have been made for a large number of colorimetric, fluorescent and electrochemical sensors in the fields of disease diagnosis, health management and environmental monitoring, most of these traditional methods often suffer from some obvious deficiencies like high background signals, uncontrollable time and space conditions, complex operation procedures and high costs, and therefore their practical applications are significantly limited. As an alternative strategy, photothermometric sensors based on various photothermal materials have been currently demonstrated that could effectively break the above limitations, especially with the advantages of portability, low cost, high resolution and high spatiotemporal controllability, thus realizing more potential applications, and becoming a new forefront and potential POCT analysis strategy toward different target analytes. To date, the review for the development of the newly developed photothermometric assays has hardly been reported and discussed. To highlight the significant advances and provide a full picture understanding of this emerging POCT method, we summary the several types of photothermal agents and materials, which were frequently used in the photothermometric sensors and discuss the corresponding sensing applications in this review. Finally, the current challenges and future perspectives in the different photothermal agents and materials-based photothermometric fields are also demonstrated.