Recent advances in nanozyme-based materials for environmental pollutant detection and remediation

Abstract

Natural enzymes inevitably suffer from inherent limitations, including low stability, high cost, sensitive catalytic activity toward environmental stimuli, and difficulties in recycling and reusing. To address these limitations, a number of enzyme mimics, particularly nanozymes, have been widely explored as superior candidates to mimic natural enzymes because of their low cost, high stability, flexibility and controllable catalytic activity. Because of their outstanding physicochemical properties, nanozymes demonstrate widespread applications in disease diagnosis and treatment, antibacterial agents, chemical sensing, and environmental pollutant monitoring and remediation. This review summarizes recent progress in the design and fabrication of nanozyme-based materials and their catalytic mechanisms and application in environmental pollutant detection and remediation. The present challenges and future perspectives are discussed for the development of multifunctional nanozyme material systems with high-efficiency, high-selectivity, and good stability. Further expansion of their real-world applicability in environmental fields would greatly inspire more novel research directions in this emerging area.