Advanced Visual Sensing Strategies for Environmental Pollutant Detection
A special issue of Molecules (ISSN 1420-3049). This special issue belongs to the section "Applied Chemistry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 April 2026 | Viewed by 23
Special Issue Editors
Interests: adsorption; membrane separation; molecularly imprinted technology; extraction; polymerization
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
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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Keywords
- visual sensing
- colorimetric detection
- ratiometric analysis
- sensor arrays
- environmental pollutants
- portable and smart devices
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