Abstract

Carbon dots (C-dots) are emergent nanomaterials of carbon-based materials family and have gained significant research interest because of their environmental friendliness, brightness, tunable fluorescence, chemical inertness, low cost, simple synthetic route and availability for wide variety of starting materials. These are considered as potential competitor to conventional semiconductor quantum dots in terms of lower toxicity. It is found that their involvement in adverse fields of chemical and bio-sensing, bio-imaging, drug delivery, photocatalysis, electrocatalysis and light-emitting devices makes as an ideal and potential candidate. Interestingly they are treated as important and versatile platform for engineering multifunctional nanosensors. This review focuses on the remarkable research progress of high quality tunable fluorescent C-dots synthesis via familiar top-down and bottom-up approaches. Their fluorescence origin has been nicely demonstrated by quantum confinement effect, surface state and molecular fluorescence properties. Finally, selective and sensitive atmospheric prevailed volatile organic compounds recognition has been explained with C-dots in both solution and solid phase along with discussion on challenging and future research direction.

摘要

碳点（C-dots）是碳基材料家族的新兴纳米材料，因其环境友好、亮度、荧光可调、化学惰性、成本低、合成路线简单和适用于多种起始材料而引起了广泛的研究兴趣. 就较低的毒性而言，这些被认为是传统半导体量子点的潜在竞争对手。发现它们在化学和生物传感、生物成像、药物输送、光催化、电催化和发光器件等不利领域的参与使其成为理想和潜在的候选者。有趣的是，它们被视为设计多功能纳米传感器的重要且通用的平台。本综述侧重于通过熟悉的自上而下和自下而上的方法合成高质量可调荧光 C 点的显着研究进展。它们的荧光起源已经通过量子限制效应、表面状态和分子荧光特性得到了很好的证明。最后，通过溶液和固相中的碳点解释了选择性和敏感的大气中普遍存在的挥发性有机化合物识别，并讨论了具有挑战性的和未来的研究方向。