Indicator displacement assay-based chemosensor arrays for saccharides using off-the-shelf materials toward simultaneous on-site detection on paper

Abstract

Chemosensor arrays are useful analytical methods in supramolecular analytical chemistry, which discriminate molecular information such as species and their concentrations based on pattern recognition. Molecular self-assembled systems can provide not only multi-optical response patterns but also easy preparation of chemosensors. In this regard, dynamic covalent bonds play key roles in competitive assays (i.e., indicator displacement assay (IDA)). In this review, we propose an actual approach for simple IDA-based colorimetric and fluorescent chemosensor arrays utilizing only off-the-shelf materials. With chemometrics techniques, the IDA-based chemosensor arrays successfully recognized target saccharides. Toward on-site analysis, we further applied the IDA-based chemosensor array to a paper-based analytical device. The chemosensor array on the paper has achieved an accurate on-site analysis utilizing image processing without spectrophotometric instruments. The off-the-shelf material-based chemosensor arrays with pattern recognition techniques would be a novel analytical method for lab-free detections.