An indirect approach for anion detection: the displacement strategy and its application

The development of new optical anion chemosensors with high sensitivity and selectivity is very important, since anions possess some fundamental roles in a wide range of biological and chemical processes. The displacement approach is a method using anion binding sites and signaling subunits, which are not covalently attached but forming a coordination complex, in which the presence of anions revives the noncoordinated spectroscopic behavior of the indicator. In the past five years, according to the displacement strategy, many good optical anion chemosensors have been successfully obtained. This paper reviews the recent progress in the field of the fluorescent and colorimetric anion chemosensors designed according to the displacement strategy (mainly from 2008 to 2011), and gives some outlooks for the further exploration of new optical anion chemosensors.