Facile synthesis and photoluminescence mechanism of graphene quantum dots

Abstract

We report a facile hydrothermal synthesis of intrinsic fluorescent graphene quantum dots (GQDs) with two-dimensional morphology. This synthesis uses glucose, concentrate sulfuric acid, and deionized water as reagents. Concentrated sulfuric acid is found to play a key role in controlling the transformation of as-prepared hydrothermal products from amorphous carbon nanodots to well-crystallized GQDs. These GQDs show typical absorption characteristic for graphene, and have nearly excitation-independent ultraviolet and blue intrinsic emissions. Temperature-dependent PL measurements have demonstrated strong electron-electron scattering and electron-phonon interactions, suggesting a similar temperature behavior of GQDs to inorganic semiconductor quantum dots. According to optical studies, the ultraviolet emission is found to originate from the recombination of electron-hole pairs localized in the C=C bonds, while the blue emission is from the electron transition of sp2 domains.