Gram-scale synthesis of graphene quantum dots via energetic material deflagration for bioimaging application

Abstract

Graphene quantum dots, which possesses unique photoluminescence property, have received enormous attention for bio-sensor, photovoltaic devices and bioimaging application. However, synthesizing high-quality of GQDs remains a formidable obstacle in terms of the two conventional methods since the “top-down” method usually requires expensive raw materials while the “bottom-up” method suffers from incompatibility between quality and production. Thus, developing new strategies to trade-off these issues is promising for GQDs production. Here, we reported an ultrafast deflagration strategy by igniting Al and pentafluoropyridine mixture to prepare high-quality of carbon nanomaterials (CNs) with high graphitization, reaching a high yield of ∼3 g. Combining with a subsequent Hummer's exfoliation and dialyze method, the CNs materials were successfully exfoliated into the uniform-dispersed graphene quantum dots (D-GQDs) with size of 1∼2 nm. The as-prepared D-GQDs derivatives shows remarkable optical properties and it is successfully applied in fluorescence imaging of HeLa cells. Our results in this study highlighted the high efficiency of deflagration technique to prepare functional carbon-based nanomaterials, and proposed a facile and fast strategy for gram-scale synthesis.