Recent advances in luminescent heavy metal complexes for sensing

Luminescent metal complexes have attracted increasing attention in the literature over the last few decades. In particular, transition metal compounds have been widely studied for luminescent sensing applications in recent years due to their attractive photophysical properties. In this review, we first summarize the recent development of luminescent transition metal complexes as chemosensors for cations, anions, gas molecules and biomolecules in the years of 2010–2012. The second part of this review highlights the application of luminescent metal complexes for label-free DNA-based sensing.

► Metal complexes have unique advantages making them suitable for sensing applications.
► We summarized the recent development of luminescent metal complexes as chemosensors.
► The application of luminescent metal complexes for DNA-based sensing is also reviewed.