Carbon Dots with Continuously Tunable Full-Color Emission and Their Application in Ratiometric pH Sensing

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• 作者：Hui Nie ; Minjie Li ; Quanshun Li ; Shaojun Liang ; Yingying Tan ; Lan Sheng ; Wei Shi ; Sean Xiao-An Zhang
• 刊名：Chemistry of Materials
• 出版年：2014
• 出版时间：May 27, 2014
• 年：2014
• 卷：26
• 期：10
• 页码：3104-3112
• 全文大小：437K
• 年卷期：v.26,no.10(May 27, 2014)
• ISSN：1520-5002

文摘

Two types of carbon dots (C dots) exhibiting respective excitation-independent blue emission and excitation-dependent full-color emissions have been synthesized via a mild one-pot process from chloroform and diethylamine. This new bottom-up synthetic strategy leads to highly stable crystalline C dots with tunable surface functionalities in high reproducibility. By detailed characterization and comparison of the two types of C dots, it is proved concretely that the surface functional groups, such as C鈺怬 and C鈺怤, can efficiently introduce new energy levels for electron transitions and result in the continuously adjustable full-color emissions. A simplified energy level and electron transition diagram has been proposed to help understand how surface functional groups affect the emission properties. By taking advantage of the unique excitation-dependent full-color emissions, various new applications can be anticipated. Here, as an example, a ratiometric pH sensor using two emission wavelengths of the C dots as independent references has been constructed to improve the reliability and accuracy, and the pH sensor is applied to the measurement of intracellular pH values and cancer diagnosis.