Progress of quartz crystal microbalance in chiral analysis.
Chiral analysis is one of the most important/challenging analytical tasks due to the necessity for differentiation of very slight differences in the molecular configurations between chiral isomers. It consists of two processes, chiral recognition and signal transduction. Quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) holds a great promise for the next-generation sensors, due to its remarkable mass sensitivity, fast response, capable of online detection and low cost. It has been the focus of academic and practical research on chiral analysis during the last two decades. This review provides a detailed overview of recent advances made in chiral analysis based on QCM detection with regard to the recognition elements, which include synthetic macromolecules, molecular imprinting polymers (MIPs), proteins, amino acids and their derivatives, etc. The prospects of using QCM for chiral analysis are also put forward.