Encapsulation and protection of carbon dots within MCM-41 material

Abstract

The effective encapsulation of Carbon Dots (CDs) within spherical-like MCM-41 nanoparticles is reported in this work, using a simple, low cost synthetic procedure, here focusing on blue luminescent CDs. CDs of 2 nm average size, with strong photoluminescence, are embedded into MCM-41 nanoparticles during the sol-gel procedure, using tetrathylorthosilicate as the precursor for the glass structure, whereas a cationic surfactant is used as the structure directing agent under basic conditions. The white powder of the final hybrid material showed long term, stable photoluminescence due to the presence of the CDs, indicating the protective character of the silica matrix. Most importantly, it is reported that the photoluminescence of the final hybrid material is not significantly affected by a thermal treatment at 550 °C. The transparent nature of the MCM-41, allows loading this type of mesoporous materials with CDs, thus, providing some new key composite photoluminescent materials for energy and other related applications.