Metal-organic frameworks for food safety monitoring: advances in sensing exogenous contaminants.

Abstract

The rapid, sensitive detection of foodborne contaminants is essential for food safety and public health. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have emerged as leading sensing materials due to their tunable porosity, high surface area, abundant active sites, and versatile physicochemical properties. Recent advances in MOF-based sensors enable precise recognition and quantification of hazardous substances such as heavy metals, pesticides, antibiotics, and toxic small molecules. Their intrinsic catalytic activity, signal amplification capacity, and selective binding significantly improve sensitivity, selectivity, and anti-interference performance in complex food matrices. This review highlights the latest progress in MOF-enabled sensing strategies, focusing on detection principles, material design, and performance enhancement. Current challenges-including aqueous stability, biocompatibility, and matrix effects-are critically discussed. Future trends point toward intelligent, portable, and multifunctional sensing platforms. This work offers theoretical and technical insights to advance MOF-based solutions for real-world food safety monitoring.