Recent advances of conjugated polymer (CP) nanocomposite-based chemical sensors and their applications in food spoilage detection: A comprehensive review

Food quality and safety has been a great public concern all over the globe and reliable sensors or monitoring systems has become a prerequisite to affirm quality of various food commodities, especially highly perishable foods, such as seafood, pork, beef, lamb and chicken. Food freshness chemosensors is an emerging sensing technology in the field of food industrial research and development. Although the application of chemosensors is evidently on the move and concurrently lacking commercial viability, it has tremendous potential to empower onsite monitoring of food quality and safety in the food processing industry. This review aims to (a) elaborate different classes of CPs and CPs nanocomposite based chemosensors; (b) sensor systems with special focus on innovative conjugated polymer (CPs) chemical sensors for food freshness detection; and (c) applications of highly sensitive and selective (CPs) nanocomposite based chemosensors with Active/Intelligent technologies for meat and seafood spoilage detection Via colorimetric (naked eye detection) and fluorometric "turn- on/off' response, providing new pathways of CPs based nanocomposite chemosensor-application in the food industry. Thus, this review illustrates the potential scope of such intelligent sensor systems in food spoilage detection for commercial viability, resulting as a very simple, cost-efficient, consumer approved and other multipurpose tool.