Rapid Synthesis of Carbon Dots by Hydrothermal Treatment of Lignin

Wenxin Chen; Chaofan Hu; Yunhua Yang; Jianghu Cui; Yingliang Liu

doi:10.3390/ma9030184

Rapid Synthesis of Carbon Dots by Hydrothermal Treatment of Lignin

Materials (Basel). 2016 Mar 9;9(3):184. doi: 10.3390/ma9030184.

Authors

Wenxin Chen¹, Chaofan Hu², Yunhua Yang³, Jianghu Cui⁴, Yingliang Liu⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Chemistry, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, China. tchenwenxin@jnu.edu.cn.
² College of Mechanics, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China. huchaofan@tyut.edu.cn.
³ Guangdong Institute of Microbiology, State Key Laboratory of Applied Microbiology Southern China, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Microbial Culture Collection and Application, Guangzhou 510070, China. yangyh@gdim.cn.
⁴ Department of Applied Chemistry, College of Science, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China. jianghucui@soil.gd.cn.
⁵ Department of Applied Chemistry, College of Science, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China. tliuyl@scau.edu.cn.

Abstract

A rapid approach has been developed for the fluorescent carbon dots (CDs) by the hydrothermal treatment of lignin in the presence of H₂O₂. The as-synthesized CDs were found to emit blue photoluminescence with excellent photostability. Moreover, the CDs displayed biocompatibility, low cytotoxicity, and high water solubility properties. Finally, the as-resulted CDs were demonstrated to be excellent probes for bioimaging and biosensing applications.

Keywords: H2O2; bioimaging; carbon dots; hydrothermal synthesis; lignin.