Fluorescent conjugated polymers for chemical and biochemical sensing

This review deals with the emerging field of fluorescent conjugated polymers for the development of chemical and/or biochemical sensors. As a result of their amplified physical properties due to a "molecular wire effect", these materials offer excellent characteristics to develop different sensing schemes (e.g., employing direct superquenching or relying on development of fluorescence-resonance-energy-transfer formats). The versatility of their synthesis procedures allows us to introduce the desired functional groups to achieve analytically useful interactions with analytes [e.g., from transition-metal ions to explosives, or even, in recent years, relevant biomolecules (e.g., proteins or DNA, where conformational changes play a decisive role in detection)]. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.