Applications of Carbon Dots (CDs) in Drug Delivery

Abstract

The star of the carbon nanomaterials industry is now carbon dots (C-Dots). C-Dots are a potential tool because of their applications in imaging, environmental, catalytic, biological, and energy fields thanks to their numerous distinctive physicochemical and photochemical characteristics. C-Dots have received plenty of research attention and have shown remarkable application growth to date. Green biomass or sustainable raw materials may be used to create C-Dots since they are economical, cost-effective, and most significantly, they encourage waste reduction. However, there is still a problem that must be solved regarding the production of high-quality C-Dots from biomass waste. Chemotherapy is currently recognized as the most successful way of cancer treatment, although it is known to induce severe side effects in patients due to its non-discriminatory harmful impact on both normal and tumor cells. The fundamental issue in cancer and other complicated disorders of chemotherapy is understanding drug distribution throughout organs and designing a site-specific drug delivery method that targets cancer cells. Therefore, it is of crucial importance to create advanced routes for the targeted and traceable administration of anti-cancer drugs. C-Dots can be produced using top-down or bottom-up approaches, with the latter method being more frequently employed for high-volume and low-cost syntheses. In this comprehensive review article, we mainly discuss the structure of CDs, classification of CDs, their properties, limitations, source of CDs, fabrication techniques, and characterization techniques. More significantly, we bring readers update on the most recent trends of CDs development in health care.