Strongly Luminescent Composites Based on Carbon Dots Embedded in a Nanoporous Silicate Glass

Evgeniia A Stepanidenko; Pavel D Khavlyuk; Irina A Arefina; Sergei A Cherevkov; Yuan Xiong; Aaron Döring; Georgii V Varygin; Dmitry A Kurdyukov; Daniil A Eurov; Valery G Golubev; Mikhail A Masharin; Alexander V Baranov; Anatoly V Fedorov; Elena V Ushakova; Andrey L Rogach

doi:10.3390/nano10061063

Strongly Luminescent Composites Based on Carbon Dots Embedded in a Nanoporous Silicate Glass

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2020 May 30;10(6):1063. doi: 10.3390/nano10061063.

Authors

Evgeniia A Stepanidenko¹, Pavel D Khavlyuk¹, Irina A Arefina¹, Sergei A Cherevkov¹, Yuan Xiong², Aaron Döring², Georgii V Varygin³, Dmitry A Kurdyukov⁴, Daniil A Eurov⁴, Valery G Golubev⁴, Mikhail A Masharin⁵, Alexander V Baranov¹, Anatoly V Fedorov¹, Elena V Ushakova^{1

2}, Andrey L Rogach^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Center of Information Optical Technologies, ITMO University, 49 Kronverkskiy Pr., 197101 St. Petersburg, Russia.
² Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Centre for Functional Photonics (CFP), City University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong, China.
³ Interdisciplinary Resource Center for Nanotechnology, St. Petersburg State University, 7/9 Universitetskaya nab., 199034 St. Petersburg, Russia.
⁴ Laboratory of Amorphous Semiconductors, Ioffe Institute, 26 Politekhnicheskaya Str., 194021 St. Petersburg, Russia.
⁵ Department of Physics and Engineering, ITMO University, 49 Kronverkskiy Pr., 197101 St. Petersburg, Russia.

Abstract

Luminescent composites based on entirely non-toxic, environmentally friendly compounds are in high demand for a variety of applications in photonics and optoelectronics. Carbon dots are a recently developed kind of luminescent nanomaterial that is eco-friendly, biocompatible, easy-to-obtain, and inexpensive, with a stable and widely tunable emission. Herein, we introduce luminescent composites based on carbon dots of different chemical compositions and with different functional groups at the surface which were embedded in a nanoporous silicate glass. The structure and optical properties of these composites were comprehensively examined using electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared transmission, UV-Vis absorption, and steady-state and time-resolved photoluminescence. It is shown that the silicate matrix efficiently preserved, and even enhanced the emission of different kinds of carbon dots tested. The photoluminescence quantum yield of the fabricated nanocomposite materials reached 35-40%, which is comparable to or even exceeds the values for carbon dots in solution.

Keywords: carbon dots; composite materials; nanoporous silicate glass; photoluminescence.

Abstract

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