Porphyrin-based chemical sensors and multisensor arrays operating in the liquid phase

The peculiar chemistry of porphyrins has arisen a great interest for the exploitation of these macrocycles in different application fields, such as biomedicine, catalysts, photonics, molecular electronics and sensors development. The application of porphyrins in chemical sensors, and in multisensory analysis in particular, is extremely attractive, since these compounds have demonstrated to be versatile sensing materials, able to detect a wide range of analytes by a manifold of different sensing mechanisms. Moreover, this feature makes possible to compare the performance of different transduction principles. In this work we present a short historical overview, some recent achievements and the future trends in the development and applications of liquid phase chemical sensors and sensor arrays (electronic tongue) based on porphyrin receptors. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.