Apparently mundane, amorphous nanostructures of carbon have optical properties which are as exotic as their crystalline counterparts. In this work we demonstrate a simple and inexpensive mechano-chemical method to prepare bulk quantities of self-passivated, amorphous carbon dots. Like the graphene quantum dots, the water soluble, amorphous carbon dots too, exhibit excitation-dependent photoluminescence with very high quantum yield (~40%). The origin and nature of luminescence in these high entropy nanostructures are well understood in terms of the abundant surface traps. The photoluminescence property of these carbon dots is exploited to detect trace amounts of the nitro-aromatic explosive - 2,4,6-trinitrophenol (TNP). The benign nanostructures can selectively detect TNP over a wide range of concentrations (0.5 to 200 µM) simply by visual inspection, with a detection limit of 0.2 µM, and consequently outperform nearly all reported TNP sensor materials.
Key Laboratory of Biomedical Information Engineering of Ministry of Education, School of Life Science and Technology, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710049, China.
Magnetic fluorescent nanomaterials have broad application prospects as taggants in fields such as anticounterfeiting identification, suspicious object tracking, and potential fingerprint recognition in forensic medicine. It is a common method to synthesize magnetic fluorescent composite nanoparticles by preparing a shell on the surface of magnetic particles to load fluorescent materials. In this work, a magnetic fluorescence nanohybrid was synthesized by in situ encapsulation of carbon quantum dots (CQDs) during the preparation of a SiO shell on the surface of FeO nanoparticles.
Glutathione (GSH) is a bioactive tripeptide with important physiological functions in animals, plants, and microorganisms. GSH participates in various biochemical reactions in vivo and is known for its antioxidant, anti-allergy, and detoxification properties. This study introduces an innovative photoelectrochemical (PEC) method for GSH detection, leveraging a fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO) electrode enhanced by TiO nanoflowers and graphitic carbon nitride quantum dots (g-CNQDs).
Glutathione (GSH) is a key biomarker closely associated with cancer, and its content varies greatly between normal cells and cancer cells. However, intracellular detection of GSH was challenging because existing probes not only have a long detection time but also have fluorescence in the blue-green region that overlaps with the biological matrix's spontaneous fluorescence, thus affecting the detection accuracy. Therefore, a new red fluorescent nano-probe was needed to rapidly and accurately detected GSH within the biological matrix.
Key Laboratory of Dental Maxillofacial Reconstruction and Biological Intelligence Manufacturing, School and Hospital of Stomatology, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, Gansu Province, China.
The maturation of cardiomyocytes (CMs) plays key roles in regenerative medicine and the treatment of cardiovascular diseases via stem cell-derived CMs. Carbon dots (CDs) have good biocompatibility, optical properties, and electrophysical properties and have been widely applied in bioimaging, biosensors, and biotherapy. In this review, we comprehensively summarize recent advances in promoting the maturation of CMs, mainly human pluripotent stem cell-derived CMs, and related regenerative medicine.
