Advanced Visual Sensing Strategies for Environmental Pollutant Detection

Dear Colleagues,

The growing threat of environmental pollutants has driven an urgent need for rapid, accurate, and portable analytical tools capable of on-site assessment. In recent years, visual sensing technologies—encompassing colorimetric, ratiometric, array-based, and film-integrated methods—have emerged as powerful strategies to address these challenges.

Innovative sensing platforms have been developed using carbon dots, metal–organic frameworks, rare-earth complexes, covalent and molecularly imprinted polymers, and hybrid membranes. These functional materials enable the transformation of molecular recognition events into visual or optical signals perceivable by the naked eye or smartphone-assisted systems. Such visual sensors exhibit remarkable sensitivity, selectivity, and user-friendliness, offering low-cost and real-time monitoring of contaminants such as antibiotics, pesticides, heavy metals, and emerging pollutants in water, soil, and food samples.

This Special Issue aims to highlight recent advances in advanced visual sensing strategies for environmental pollutant detection, bridging the gap between material design, analytical chemistry, and environmental monitoring.

Dr. Minjia Meng
Guest Editor

Dr. Bo Hu
Guest Editor Assistant

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