Ion detection is crucial for environmental
quality, human
health,
and industry development. Schiff bases and their complexes are widely
applied as the probes for ion detection in chemistry, environment,
and biology fields. There are many kinds of interesting Schiff bases
and their coordination complexes that have been designed and synthesized
based on the facile synthesis. Recently, Schiff base chemistry has
intercrossed with nanomaterials toward wide applications. Nanomaterials
are characterized by their sizes in the range of several nanometers
to several hundreds of nanometers and then with large specific surface
area. They have unusual properties such as mechanical property, optical
property, and catalytic property, which are usually not active for
their bulk materials. The development of new nanomaterials has dramatically
increased in the past two decades, especially the hybridization of
inorganic nanomaterials with organic functional species. Schiff base
is a very famous class of organic molecules with diversity structures
and properties. The remarkable point is that they are synthesized
facilely. In this review, the principles and methods of Schiff base
preparation have been scanned briefly. Then nanomaterials functionalized
by Schiff base to achieve efficient, rapid, and sensitive recognition
of ions were elaborated. The types of nanomaterials are included the
metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks
(COFs) constructed by Schiff base ligands with nanosized pores and
surface modification of nanoparticles (NPs) with Schiff bases, which
can not only retain the advantages of the original nanomaterials but
also improve the ability of ion-specific recognition. The development
of colorimetric, fluorescence, and electrochemical sensors based on
Schiff base nanomaterials for ion detection in recent years was carefully
summarized as well. It should be mentioned that the types of ions
in this review are mainly metal ions. Finally, the challenges in the
future in this field have been proposed.