Perovskite nanocrystals (PNCs) served as an emerging optical indicator for food safety and quality assessment: progress, challenges, and opportunities

Life-threatening food safety incidents, especially foodborne diseases, are an increasingly severe global public health problem. Food safety and quality assessment have become indispensable measures, ensuring public health, regulatory adherence, and fostering consumer trust in the integrity of the food supply chain. The emerging perovskite nanocrystals (PNCs) are promising optical indicators with extraordinary luminescence properties, exhibiting excellent application potential in food safety. Benefiting from escalating demand for precise, rapid, and accurate analytical methodologies, the development of food safety biosensing platforms utilizing PNCs as optical indicators has emerged as a novel research avenue. This review provides more information about PNCs as emerging optical indicators for food safety and quality assessment. The development history of PNCs, the excellent optical properties, and synthesis strategies of PNCs are briefly introduced. Then, the detailed discussion is summarized to explain the surface engineering strategies to enhance the structural stability of PNCs and improve the application performance of PNCs in biosensing, and the application of PNCs in food hazard analysis and food quality assessment. Finally, the opportunities and challenges of biosensing based on PNCs as optical indicators in food safety are discussed. This review is expected to provide more insights into PNCs as novel optical indicators, which will benefit the design and development of more PNCs-based biosensors to ensure food safety.