Supramolecular low molecular weight gels have potential in many areas from medicine to optoelectronics. Of the different applications, visual sensing of chemical analytes using gels is a fairly new concept in materials chemistry research. Among various analytes, cyanide is considered the most threatening to the environment and human life because of its acute toxicity. Generally, the detection of cyanide involves the use of sophisticated and expensive instrumentation, which complementary entails highly trained personnel to operate it. In contrast, a gel-based visual detection technique provides an advantage as it is simple, cost-effective, and instrument-free whilst the sensing event can be executed either by observing a phase transformation or by a naked eye detectable color change of the gel. Further, as the gel formation requires a high concentration of gelator (≥10⁻³ M), for the same chemical compound, the gel phase interactions often exhibit better selectivity for the ionic guests than in the solution state. Despite these facts, limited attempts have been made to synthesize gel-based cyanide sensors. In this review, we discuss an up-to-date summary of various reports on cyanide responsive gels emphasizing the approaches, design principles, and reaction mechanisms. We also highlight the advantages, limitations, and challenges as well as the necessity of further exploration of gels in this domain.

中文翻译：

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氰化物传感中的超分子凝胶：综述

从医学到光电子学，超分子低分子量凝胶在许多领域都有潜力。在不同的应用中，使用凝胶进行化学分析物的视觉感测是材料化学研究中的一个相当新的概念。在各种分析物中，由于氰化物的急性毒性，因此被认为是对环境和人类生命的最大威胁。通常，氰化物的检测涉及使用复杂且昂贵的仪器，这需要经过培训的人员进行补充。相比之下，基于凝胶的视觉检测技术具有优势，因为它简单，经济高效且无需仪器，同时可以通过观察相变或通过肉眼可检测到的凝胶颜色变化来执行传感事件。进一步，^-3 M），对于相同的化合物，凝胶相相互作用对离子客体的选择性通常比溶液状态更好。尽管有这些事实，但为合成基于凝胶的氰化物传感器进行了有限的尝试。在这篇综述中，我们讨论了有关氰化物响应性凝胶的各种报告的最新摘要，其中强调了方法，设计原理和反应机理。我们还强调了该领域中凝胶的优势，局限性和挑战以及进一步探索凝胶的必要性。