Advances in Integrating Carbon Dots With Membranes and Their Applications

Abstract

AbstractCarbon dots (CDs) attract interests from researchers in the field of membranes owing to their ultra‐small size, non‐toxic, highly hydrophilic, abundant surface functional groups, stable photoluminescence, fast proton conductivity and excellent light capture capability. The integration of membranes with CDs (CDs@membranes) can enhance the overall performance of membranes significantly and CDs@membranes relies on three approaches: doping, grafting and layer‐by‐layer (LbL) self‐assembly. This paper reviews the research progress of CDs@membranes in the past five years, introduces the mechanism of CDs to improve membrane performance and the methods for preparing CDs@membranes, categorizes them into water treatment, sensing, electrochemistry, light processing and other fields for review, and finally discusses the current challenges and outlook the future direction.