Blue- and green-emitting hydrophobic carbon dots: preparation, optical transition, and carbon dot-loading.

In the past decade, hydrophobic fluorescent carbon dots (OCDs) have received little attention, and its potential application and light transition mechanism is seldom explored. Here we report a novel one-step approach for synthesizing blue- and green-emitting hydrophobic fluorescent carbon dots (OCD and OCD) by calcinating with the uses of citric acid and hexadecylamine as initial reactants. The optimal conditions for preparing OCD and OCD were obtained by using the Taguchi L25 (3) orthogonal array.