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Mechanism insights into tunable photoluminescence of carbon dots by hydroxyl radicals

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Abstract

As new luminescent nanomaterials, carbon dots have superior properties regarding their multi-color emission, chemical stability and biocompatibility, which are important for potential biological and medicine applications. Tuning the photoluminescence of carbon dots using hydroxyl radical through fast chemical reaction can be a simple and cost-effective method to modify their optical properties. Carbon dots of red fluorescence (r-CDs) were first prepared from phenylenediamines by a solvothermal method and subsequently treated with hydroxyl radicals or tert-butyl peroxyl radicals to generate carbon dots with new emission properties. Instead, other reactive oxygen such as singlet oxygen and hypochlorite could mainly quench the fluorescence of the r-CDs. With further investigation, it was found that these oxygen radicals played roles like chemical scissors cutting the surface chain groups of r-CDs to smaller-sized CDs, resulting in blueshift of emission. These findings may be helpful to investigate the mechanism relating to fluorescence properties of carbon dots, and it also provides a new method to control the emission of carbon dots through simple chemical treatment.

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Acknowledgements

The work was financially supported from the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFA0207003), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21475134, 21507135, 21675158 and 21775042) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2016ZZD06).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MOE Key Laboratory of Resources and Environmental System Optimization, College of Environmental Science and Engineering, North China Electric Power University, Beijing, 102206, China

    Ji Yue, Long Yu, Tianxin Hou, Xinfeng Chen, Hongwei Ge & Suhua Wang

  2. School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Anhui University of Technology, Ma’anshan, 243032, Anhui, China

    Kui Zhang

  3. Institute of Intelligent Machines, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei, 230031, Anhui, China

    Huan Yu & Suhua Wang

  4. NAAM Research Group, King Abdulaziz University, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

    Tasawar Hayat, Ahmed Alsaedi & Suhua Wang

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  1. Ji Yue
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Correspondence to Kui Zhang or Suhua Wang.

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Yue, J., Zhang, K., Yu, H. et al. Mechanism insights into tunable photoluminescence of carbon dots by hydroxyl radicals. J Mater Sci 54, 6140–6150 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-018-03254-1

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