Abstract
Carbon dots (CDs) are known as the rising star of carbon-based nanomaterials and, by virtue of their unique structure and fascinating properties, they have attracted considerable interest in different fields such as biological sensing, drug delivery, photodynamic therapy, photocatalysis, and solar cells in recent years. Particularly, the outstanding electronic and optical properties of the CDs have attracted increasing attention in biomedical and photocatalytic applications owing to their low toxicity, biocompatibility, excellent photostability, tunable fluorescence, outstanding efficient up-converted photoluminescence behavior, and photo-induced electron transfer ability. This article reviews recent progress on the synthesis routes and optical properties of CDs as well as biomedical and photocatalytic applications. Furthermore, we discuss an outlook on future and potential development of the CDs based biosensor, biological dye, biological vehicle, and photocatalysts in this booming research field.
Highlights
Carbon dots (CDs) are known as the rising star of carbon-based nanomaterials and, by virtue of their unique structure and fascinating properties, they have attracted considerable interest in different fields such as biological sensing, drug delivery, photodynamic therapy, photocatalysis, and solar cells in recent years
CDs have received extensive and significant attention owing to their unique structure and fascinating properties in different fields
Different from the graphene quantum dots (GQDs), carbon quantum dots (CQDs) and carbonized polymeric dots (CPDs) possess typically spherical core connected with surface groups
Summary
As zero-dimension carbon-based nanomaterials with ultrafine sizes below 10 nm, carbon dots (CDs) are promising candidates for numerous applications [1,2,3,4,5]. CDs are a newly developed type of carbon nanomaterial and composed of discrete, quasi-spherical nanoparticles. They were first discovered from the components of fluorescent nanoparticles during single-walled carbon nanotubes purification in 2004. Different from the GQDs, CQDs and CPDs possess typically spherical core nano11123419. Different from the GQDs, CQDs and CPDs possess typically spherical core connected with surface groups. Of the CDs can be changed by utilizing different synthesis routes, routes, which which achieves achieves tunable tunable surface moieties moieties of of the CDs facilitate facilitate to to expand expand light emission.
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