Mingling Electronic Chemical Sensors with Supramolecular Host-Guest Chemistry

Supramolecular host-guest chemistry allows sensitive and selective recognition of a certain substrate by using a rationally designed receptor. Such a molecular receptor can be incorporated into an electronic chemical sensor so that the anticipated host-guest binding event can be transduced directly into electric signals. In particular, chemiresistors and chemically sensitive field-effect transistors report the change of conductance/resistance of the active conducting materials upon the desired supramolecular binding event via varied mechanisms. This mini-review highlights the recent advances in the development of electronic sensors, in which the active conducting/semiconducting materials are incorporated with specific supramolecular receptors. Depending on the nature of the active conducting layer, these devices can be categorized into carbon materials-based sensors and organic semiconductor-based sensors. At the end of this review, an outlook of the related field is provided and discussed.