Issue 7, 2020

A facile synthesis of two ionized fluorescent carbon dots and selective detection toward Fe2+ and Cu2+

Abstract

In this study, a facile synthesis of two ionized carbon dots (CDs-2 and CDs-3) is reported, in which different ionic pairs are formed at the surface of the carbon core. In contrast to CDs-3, the accumulation of carbon core can be clearly observed in the TEM image of CDs-2. This is due to the linkage of the dibromine alkyl group. Compared with naked CDs in the absence of the ionic pair, the maximum emission wavelength undergoes a red-shift of nearly 60 nm. Moreover, protic solvents (water, ethanol and N,N′-dimethyl formamide) have an apparent effect on the emission intensities of CDs-2 and CDs-3. The time-resolved average lifetimes of CDs-2 and CDs-3 are calculated as 56.34 ns and 54.50 ns, respectively. Furthermore, they both have much better fluorescence stability in the solution with pH ranging from 2 to 11 due to the presence of the imidazolium cation. It is interesting to see that CDs-2 and CDs-3 have much different responses towards Cu2+ and Fe2+. The CDs-3 solution generates clear fluorescence quenching when treated with Fe2+. In brief, we believe that these findings can inspire more research developments in the synthesis and further application of functional CDs.

Graphical abstract: A facile synthesis of two ionized fluorescent carbon dots and selective detection toward Fe2+ and Cu2+

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
23 fev 2020
Accepted
18 may 2020
First published
19 may 2020
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Nanoscale Adv., 2020,2, 2943-2949

A facile synthesis of two ionized fluorescent carbon dots and selective detection toward Fe2+ and Cu2+

L. Gao, D. Wu, W. Tan, F. Pan, J. Xu, Y. Tao and Y. Kong, Nanoscale Adv., 2020, 2, 2943 DOI: 10.1039/D0NA00151A

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications, without requesting further permission from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given and it is not used for commercial purposes.

To request permission to reproduce material from this article in a commercial publication, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party commercial publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements