Metal-organic frameworks for enzymes immobilization: advances in design strategies and food safety sensing

Food safety represents a significant global concern, requiring the development of effective methods to detect food contaminants. Enzyme-based sensors have broad application potential due to their high sensitivity and convenience. However, the intrinsic instability and poor reusability of enzymes have restricted their practical deployment. The immobilization of enzymes on suitable carriers is crucial to overcoming these limitations. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), with their high porosity, tunable structures, and unique domain-limited microenvironments, emerge as ideal platforms for enzyme immobilization to enhance enzymatic stability and catalytic efficiency. This review focuses on recent advances of using MOFs as enzyme immobilization carriers. It reviews both conventional and emerging immobilization strategies, while outlining rational designs for single-enzyme systems and multi-enzymes cascade sensors. Finally, innovative applications in the detection of pesticide residues, antibiotics, and other food contaminants are highlighted, along with a discussion of the current challenges and future prospects of enzyme immobilization on MOFs based sensors. These developments are expected to provide theoretical guidance for the practical applications of enzyme immobilization on MOFs in food safety sensing. • Enzyme immobilization on MOFs provides superior stability and enhanced catalysis. • Recent advances in enzyme immobilization methods are critically reviewed. • Rational MOFs-enzyme sensor designs for food safety monitoring are outlined. • The current challenges and future prospects in this field are discussed.