Metal-organic frameworks as an alternative smart sensing platform for designing molecularly imprinted electrochemical sensors

Although molecularly imprinted electrochemical sensors (MIECS) have proposed an intriguing potential to compete with other sensor types, they are still subject to limitations such as heterogeneous binding sites, random polymerization, and a rigid and dense network resulting in low sensitivity and specificity. Recently, MOFs as a promising sensory material have been proposed and designed to overcome the limitations mentioned above. In this context, the introduction of MOFs into MIECS shows excellent potential for fabricating a selective layer on an electrochemical sensor resulting in enhanced sensing performance. Herein, we focused our efforts on serving a comprehensive review for the researchers while revealing the cross-section of MOFs and MIECs to develop an alternative approach to improve the sensitivity of the electrochemical sensors by using MOFs-based materials. Moreover, the employment of various materials, including nanoparticles, carbon-based materials, and nanocomposites with specific functions on the performance of MIECS, has been assessed. This review will also cover the recent progress achieved in MOFs-based MIECs adapted for the detection wide range of analytes from small molecules such as amino acids, pharmaceuticals, pesticides to larger molecules, proteins. These make this review very attractive and have a great potential to result in new, further, and innovative approaches for solving challenges in MIPs and opening a new field for electrochemical sensors. •Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are promising materials for designing sensing platforms.•Molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) are highly selective and sensitive analytical tools.•MOFs-based MIECs can present more effective, affordable, specific, and reliable determination.•The intriguing potential of MOFs-based MIECs was compiled in this review.