The combination of plasmonics and surface chemistry is a fastgrowing field of research, with promising prospects for a wide range of applications, including analytical chemistry, sensing, photocatalysis, photovoltaics and nanomedicine. It takes advantage of the confined electromagnetic fields, local heat generation and hot carrier excitation, that accompany plasmon resonances to incorporate molecular functionalities into engineered nanomaterials with a spatial control at the nanoscale. This review aims to provide a concise overview of the main plasmon-mediated surface functionalization strategies developed so far, and explains how it renews the toolbox of surface chemistry approaches. Plasmon-mediated surface functionalization appears to offer an unprecedented fast and cheap large scale "bottom-up" approach to trigger site-selective surface functionalization and place molecules/nanomaterials into highly reactive regions (reactive spots) or high electromagnetic field regions (hot spots).(e) (a)Finally, efforts are still required to further improve the analytical performance of these advanced nano-interfaces for (bio-)sensing applications and detection of trace amount of analytes.

ZnFe 2 O 4 (ZFO) spinel magnetic nanoparticles with a small particle size (11.2 nm) and large specific surface area (54.1 m 2 /g) are synthesized by a one-step hydrothermal method without the calcination process. ZFO-modified electrodes are first utilized for the simultaneous electrochemical trace detection of Hg(II), Pb(II), and Cu(II), which show an outstanding linear response for Hg(II), Pb(II), and Cu(II), and the limit of detection (LOD) is 1.61, 7.38, and 12.03 nM, respectively. Meanwhile, ZFO-modified electrodes exhibit excellent repeatability [relative standard deviation (RSD) of 0.785%], reproducibility (RSD of 0.896%), stability (RSD of 3.240%), and anti-interference analysis, which is successfully applied to the real water environment. Moreover, the ZFO-modified electrode also exhibits a high sensitivity of 1160 μA mM −1 cm −2 and LOD of 0.8 μM for glucose. These results indicate that ZFO nanoparticles as a promising modified electrode material will be potentially applied in the field of electrochemical sensors for heavy metal ions and nonenzymatic glucose.