Abstract Since their discovery, carbon dots (CDs) have been a promising nanomaterial in a variety of fields including nanomedicine. Despite their potential in this area, there are many obstacles to overcome for CDs to be approved for biomedical use. One major hindrance to CDs’ approval is related to their poorly defined structure. Herein a structural study of CDs is presented in order to rectify this shortcoming. The properties of three CDs which have significant promise in biomedical applications, black CDs (B-CDs), carbon nitride dots (CNDs), and yellow CDs (Y-CDs), are compared in order to develop a coherent structural model for each nanosystem. Absorption coefficients were measured for each system and this data gave insight on the level of disorder in each system. Furthermore, extensive structural characterization has been performed in order to derive structural information for each system. This data showed that B-CDs and CNDs are functionalized to a greater degree and are also more disordered and amorphous than Y-CDs. These techniques were used to develop a structural model consistent with the obtained data and what is known for carbonic nanostructures. These models can be used to analyze CD emission properties and to better understand the structure-property relationship in CDs.

中文翻译：

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对碳点结构的深入研究

摘要 自发现以来，碳点 (CD) 已成为包括纳米医学在内的各个领域的有前途的纳米材料。尽管它们在该领域具有潜力，但要使 CD 获准用于生物医学用途，仍有许多障碍需要克服。CD 获得批准的一个主要障碍与其定义不明确的结构有关。此处介绍了 CD 的结构研究，以纠正这一缺点。比较了三种在生物医学应用中具有重要前景的 CDs、黑色 CDs (B-CDs)、氮化碳点 (CNDs) 和黄色 CDs (Y-CDs) 的特性，以便为每个纳米系统开发一个连贯的结构模型. 测量了每个系统的吸收系数，这些数据可以让我们了解每个系统的无序程度。此外，为了获得每个系统的结构信息，已经进行了广泛的结构表征。该数据表明，与 Y-CD 相比，B-CD 和 CND 的功能化程度更高，并且也更加无序和无定形。这些技术用于开发与获得的数据和已知的碳纳米结构一致的结构模型。这些模型可用于分析 CD 发射特性并更好地了解 CD 中的结构-特性关系。