Optical bio(sensing) using nitrogen doped graphene quantum dots: Recent advances and future challenges

The exceptional optical properties and the presence of high number of reactive sites make nitrogen doped graphene quantum dots (N-GQDs) powerful tools in analytical nanoscience and nanotechnology. At the same time, their opto-electronics properties make them excellent nanomaterials for biomedical analysis aspects. This review aims to explore progress to date various features of N-GQDs for optical bio (sensing) of target analytes. Moreover, as another aim of this review is to provide insight into the intensity based spectroscopic methods which are applied in bio (sensing) discussing their advantages and disadvantages. More importantly, we discuss in detail different aspects of the applied optical bio (sensing) (e.g., formation, detection techniques, labels and sensitivity). Consequently, we discuss several outstanding properties of the optical methods, research opportunities and the development potential and prospects. We believe that N-GQDs based analytical biosensors need to be developed to detect different target analytes, elaborating microchip systems to develop GQD-based lab-on-a-chip devices for separation and detection of bio-targets.