Among the transition metal ions, copper is the third most abundant essential trace metal element in human body, and is also required by many living organisms for normal physiological processes, while excessive levels of Cu²⁺ are highly toxic to organisms and generate enormous quantities of pollution to our living environment. It is an essential and key issue to devise more sensitive and selective fluorescent chemosensors to efficiently evaluate the Cu²⁺ levels in environmental and biological systems. This review summarizes the important advances in fluorescent chemosensors for Cu²⁺, mainly made in the recent five years. Three types of chemosensors, namely ‘on-off’, ‘off-on’ and ‘ratiometric’, are categorized according to fluorescence signal changes, and each type is further classified into several sections according to the molecular structure features and/or recognition mechanisms. Additionally, the Cu²⁺-promoted reaction based chemosensors are also discussed by the different reactions like hydrolysis, oxidation and reduction. The molecular structures, recognition mechanism and applications of the fluorescent chemosensors are emphatically discussed, and the future perspective is overviewed briefly.

在过渡金属离子中，铜是人体中第三种最丰富的必需微量金属元素，也是许多活生物体正常生理过程所需要的铜，而过量的Cu ²⁺则对生物体具有高毒性，并产生大量的铜。污染我们的生活环境。设计更灵敏和选择性的荧光化学传感器，以有效评估环境和生物系统中的Cu ²⁺水平，是一个至关重要的关键问题。这篇综述总结了用于Cu ^2+的荧光化学传感器的重要进展，主要是最近五年取得的。根据荧光信号的变化将化学传感器分为“开-关”，“关-开”和“比例”三种类型，并且根据分子结构特征和/或识别机制将每种类型的化学传感器进一步分为几个部分。另外，还通过诸如水解，氧化和还原的不同反应来讨论基于Cu ²⁺促进的反应的化学传感器。着重讨论了荧光化学传感器的分子结构，识别机理及其应用，并简要概述了未来的发展前景。