A Facile, Effective Synthesis of Excellent Fluorescent Carbon Dots with Optical Properties

Carbon dots (CDs) are new fluorescent materials which have been sparked intense research due to their excellent properties, such as ultraviolet (UV) absorption, good biocompatibility, low toxicity, facile synthesis, low cost and tunable photoluminescence. Therefore, CDs appear to be a promising nanomaterials in many fields of application. Here, high quality carbon dots (named a-CDs, b-CDs, c-CDs) were synthesized through a mild, facile hydrothermal method without any further modification using different carbon precursors and surfactants. Through carefully comparing and analyzing the three as-prepared CDs samples, the c-CDs exhibited exceptional advantages including high fluorescence intensity and satisfactory chemical stability. Then, the structures, morphologies, optical properties were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), UV-vis and fluorescence spectroscopic, Raman spectra and transmission electron microscope (TEM) in details. Our results verified that one-step hydrothermal synthesis was a simple, efficient and green process for the preparation of carbon dots. The investigation on the unique characteristics can provide new recognition on the fluorescent carbon dots.