Issue 7, 2021

Water-soluble green-emitting carbon nanodots with enhanced thermal stability for biological applications

Abstract

High stability and water solubility of fluorescent nanomaterials are considered key factors to evaluate their feasibility for fundamental applications. Herein, water-soluble and thermally stable, green-emitting carbon nanodots (CNDs) have been synthesized via a facile hydrothermal method with an average size of 1.9 nm. CNDs showed green emission centered at 544 nm with the photo-luminescence quantum yield (PLQY) of up to 10.1% under the excitation of 400 nm. The obtained CNDs demonstrated high resistance towards photo-bleaching and an ionic (KCl) environment. Moreover, the aqueous solution of CNDs exhibited excellent stability under harsh thermal conditions from 10 °C to 80 °C. The as-prepared CNDs showed stable performance at high temperatures, even after keeping them at 80 °C for 30 min. Furthermore, the green emissive CNDs were incubated in T-ca cancer cells for bio-imaging applications. The results indicated that CNDs can served as an effective thermally-stable bio-imaging agent in T-ca cells at the physiological temperature range of 25 °C–45 °C. Green emission and excellent thermal stability make these CNDs promising fluorescent materials for potential applications in the medical field, which requires long-wavelength fluorescence and high-temperature imaging.

Graphical abstract: Water-soluble green-emitting carbon nanodots with enhanced thermal stability for biological applications

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Paper
Submitted
27 12 2020
Accepted
01 2 2021
First published
02 2 2021

Nanoscale, 2021,13, 4301-4307

Water-soluble green-emitting carbon nanodots with enhanced thermal stability for biological applications

W. U. Khan, L. Qin, A. Alam, P. Zhou, Y. Peng and Y. Wang, Nanoscale, 2021, 13, 4301 DOI: 10.1039/D0NR09131F

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, 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 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