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Multicolor carbon dots with concentration-tunable fluorescence and solvent-affected aggregation states for white light-emitting diodes

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Abstract

Multicolor emissive carbon dots (M-CDs) have tremendous potential applications in manifold fields of bioimaging, biomedicine and light-emitting devices. Until now, it is still difficult to produce fluorescence tunable CDs with high quantum yield across the entire visible spectra. In this work, a type of M-CDs with concentration-tunable fluorescence and solvent-affected aggregation states was synthesized by solvothermal treatment of citric acid (CA) and 1-(2-pyridylazo)-2-naphthol (PAN) and the formation mechanism was monitored by different reaction time and raw material ratio. The fluorescence spectra of M-CDs in organic solvents can range from 350 to 750 nm by adjusting the concentration. M-CDs possess different aggregation states in water and organic solvents, accompanied by different fluorescence emission, which is attributed to the different surface states of various component CDs in M-CDs. Moreover, the obtained products can be uniformly dispersed into polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) solutions as well as epoxy resins to fabricate transparent CDs/PMMA films and CDs/epoxy composites, which can effectively prevent the aggregation and produce multicolor and white light-emitting diodes (WLED). In addition, the prepared WLED with Commission Internationale de L’Eclairage (CIE) of (0.29, 0.31) by using M-CDs/epoxy resin as packages, demonstrating the M-CDs exhibit potential applications for light-emitting devices.

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Acknowledgements

The work described in this manuscript was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 51678409, 51638011 and 51578375), Tianjin Research Program of Application Foundation and Advanced Technology (Nos. 18JCYBJC87500 and 15ZCZDSF00880), State Key Laboratory of Separation Membranes and Membrane Processes (No. Z1-201507), and the Program for Innovative Research Team in University of Tianjin (No. TD13-5042).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Separation Membranes and Membrane Processes, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Tiangong University, Tianjin, 300387, China

    Fanyong Yan, Yingxia Jiang, Xiaodong Sun, Junfu Wei & Yuyang Zhang

  2. Graduate School of Life Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo, 0010024, Japan

    Liang Chen

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  1. Fanyong Yan
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  2. Yingxia Jiang
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  3. Xiaodong Sun
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  4. Junfu Wei
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Correspondence to Fanyong Yan or Junfu Wei.

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12274_2019_2569_MOESM1_ESM.pdf

Multicolor carbon dots with concentration-tunable fluorescence and solvent-affected aggregation states for white light-emitting diodes

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Yan, F., Jiang, Y., Sun, X. et al. Multicolor carbon dots with concentration-tunable fluorescence and solvent-affected aggregation states for white light-emitting diodes. Nano Res. 13, 52–60 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-019-2569-3

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