Realizing selective detection with nanozymes: Strategies and trends

The past decade has seen a period for the rapid development of nanozymes. As a class of nanoscale materials with some enzyme-like properties, nanozymes not only possess catalytic activity comparable to that of natural enzymes with the help of advanced technologies, but also have unique superiorities including excellent robustness in harsh environments, large-scale production, low cost, and ease of performance modulation. These advantages make them a promising generation of artificial enzymes for various applications. Especially in the analytical field, the nature of nanozyme catalysis offers amplified signals for high-sensitivity detection. However, most of currently developed nanozymes lack essential catalytic specificity, which becomes one of their biggest challenges in sensing. How to realize selective detection turns to be a vital problem in the nanozyme analytical community. In this review, we first summarize strategies available to make nanozymes work for the analytical application with good specificity. Then, typical examples utilizing these strategies to achieve selective detection are introduced, followed by the discussion of their merits as well as challenges. In the end, trends of nanozymes in this promising area are presented, to provide some guides for designing nanozyme sensing methods and devices for practical applications. •Realizing selective detection is a critical issue in the nanozyme analytical field.•Strategies for obtaining nanozyme-based selective analysis are discussed.•Trends of nanozymes to satisfy the analytical and sensing field are presented.•Challenges of nanozyme analysis are provided for future investigation.