Designed inorganic nanomaterials for intrinsic peroxidase mimics: A review

Over the past decade, a wide range of nanomaterials have attracted extensive attention for artificial enzymes (nanozymes) to meet task-specific applications because of their intrinsic enzyme-like catalytic activities. Artificial enzymes based on inorganic nanomaterials are now envisioned as an increasingly relevant alternative to traditional natural enzymes due to their structure robustness, unusual high catalytic performance, facile synthesis from inexpensive and abundant raw materials. This tutorial review summarizes and highlights latest progress in design and construction strategies of inorganic nanomaterials to mimic the structure and functionality of natural peroxidase with a focus on optical technique, both the existing research hotspots and future prospects are outlined and discussed. Furthermore, methodologies for tailoring nanomaterials-based intrinsic peroxidase mimics to enhance their catalytic activity including morphology control, surface modulation and heterostructure coupling are also summarized. Finally, we put forward our personal insights into future research challenges and opportunities, hoping to motivate more researchers to participate in the research in this emerging field.