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Surface metal-ion-functionalized carbon dots and their application in pH sensing

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Abstract

In recent years, it has witnessed a rapid development of the fluorescent carbon dots (CDs) due to their unique optical properties and wide range of applications. However, difficulties in synthesizing long wavelength-emitting CDs have been the major drawback of CDs, which limited their applications in fields such as bioimaging and carbon-based white light-emitting diodes. Herein, on the basis of surface electron state engineering, we prepared surface metal-ion-functionalized CDs by treating solvothermally synthesized CDs with alkali metal aqueous solutions (LiOH, NaOH or KOH). Especially, we focused the CDs treated with LiOH solution (Li-CDs) because these CDs’ absolute photoluminescence quantum yield is as high as 34% in dilute ethanol solution under 550 nm excitation compared with those treated with NaOH or KOH solutions. The electron transport effect of alkali metal ions was confirmed. Moreover, the obtained Li-CDs show high optical pH sensitivity within pH values 1–4.5 and were applied to pH sensing. This work not only proposes a feasible and controllable method to construct long wavelength-emitting CDs, but also shows the application potentiality such as pH sensing devices.

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Acknowledgements

The work was supported by the Innovation Project (Nature Science) of Universities of Guangdong Province (2018KTSCX198).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Green Preparation and Application for Functional Materials, Ministry of Education, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Hubei University, Wuhan, 430062, China

    Zhihang Guo, Ruikun Pan, Jiaji Cheng, Lei Zhang & Wanqiang Cao

  2. College of Physics and Energy, Shenzhen University, Shenzhen, 518060, China

    Tingchao He

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  1. Zhihang Guo
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  2. Ruikun Pan
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  3. Jiaji Cheng
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  4. Lei Zhang
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Correspondence to Ruikun Pan or Wanqiang Cao.

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Guo, Z., Pan, R., Cheng, J. et al. Surface metal-ion-functionalized carbon dots and their application in pH sensing. Appl. Phys. A 126, 160 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-020-3351-9

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