Glycine assists in efficient synthesis of herbal carbon dots with enhanced yield and performance.

As a special type of biomass, herbal medicine often contains a variety of biologically active substances, and taking it as a carbon source, it is expected to produce various types of biologically functional carbon dots (CDs). However, there are few reports in this field, especially in achieving enhanced performance of CDs by improving the utilization efficiency of active substances in medicinal materials. In this work, by adding glycine as an auxiliary agent in the preparation of CDs from herbal medicine (Exocarpium Citri Grandis), the carboxyl and amino groups of the adjuvant provided more reactive sites, which greatly improved the yield of CDs (about 6 times).