posted on 2021-01-21, 11:43authored byChen Li, Xiaoyan Sun, Yuan Li, Hailu Liu, Bibo Long, Dong Xie, Junjia Chen, Ke Wang
Carbon dots (CDs)
with plenty of favorable properties have been
extensively investigated in diverse areas including bioimaging, biomedicine,
sensor, energy storage, anti-counterfeiting, photocatalysis, and optoelectronic
devices. Herein, a simple, rapid, and green sonochemical-assisted
method for fabricating nitrogen-doped CDs has been developed. In this
approach, the nitrogen-doped CDs can be obtained through irradiation
by intensive ultrasonic waves from ultrasonic probes in 30 min. The
achieved CDs exhibit excellent water dispersibility, which can be
ascribed to their high functionalization. Importantly, the CDs also
demonstrate remarkable fluorescent properties, high photostability,
and low cytotoxicity, which can be utilized for multicolor cellular
imaging and anti-counterfeiting applications. As far as we know, the
sonochemical-assisted method for rapidly synthesizing nitrogen-doped
CDs from gelatin has never been reported before. Significantly, the
sonochemical-assisted approach to rapidly fabricate CDs is versatile
for the facile construction of fluorescent CDs, and the obtained CDs
can be potentially used in various areas including bioimaging and
anti-counterfeiting.