Room temperature phosphorescence (RTP) materials have drawn considerable attention by virtue of their outstanding features. Compared with organometallic complexes and pure organic compounds, carbon dots (CDs) have emerged as a new type of RTP materials, which show great advantages, such as moderate reaction condition, low toxicity, low cost, and tunable optical properties. In this review, the important progress made in RTP CDs is summarized, with an emphasis on the latest developments. The synthetic strategies of RTP CDs will be comprehensively summarized, followed by detailed introduction of their performance regulation and potential applications in anti-counterfeiting, information encryption, sensing, light-emitting diodes, and biomedicine. Finally, the remaining major challenges for RTP CDs are discussed and new opportunities in the future are proposed.
Keywords: anti-counterfeiting; carbon dots; lifetime regulation; multicolor phosphorescence; room temperature phosphorescence.
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