title: Ionic liquids as precursors for highly luminescent, surface-different nitrogen-doped carbon dots used for label-free detection of Cu2+/Fe3+ and cell imaging.
abstract: Carbon nanodots (C-Dots) have attracted much attention in recent years due to their low cost, ready scalability, excellent chemical stability, biocompatibility and multicolor luminescence. Here, we report a facile strategy for producing highly luminescent, surface-different nitrogen-doped carbon dots (C-Dots) by using different ionic liquids (ILs). Intriguingly, the surface-different C-Dots show different selectivity for Cu(2+) and Fe(3+). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first example which shows that ILs are excellent precursors for producing luminescent nanomaterial used for detection of different metal ions. The resultant nitrogen-doped C-Dots are highly photoluminescent and can be used for multicolor bioimaging. Most notable, by taking different ILs as precursors, we obtain surface-different C-Dots, which can be directly used for selective detection of Cu(2+) and Fe(3+) without any modification. These C-Dots based sensors exhibit high sensitivity and selectivity and the sensing process can be easily accomplished with one-step rapid operation. More importantly, compared with other method using QDs, organic dyes and organic solvent, this strategy is much more eco-friendly. This work may offer a new approach for developing low cost and sensitive C-Dots-based sensors for biological and environmental applications.
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Chemical Biology, Division of Biological Inorganic Chemistry, State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Resource Utilization, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, Jilin 130022, China; University of Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing 100039, China.
authors.forename: Andong
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Chemical Biology, Division of Biological Inorganic Chemistry, State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Resource Utilization, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, Jilin 130022, China.
authors.forename: Chuanqi
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Zhao
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Chemical Biology, Division of Biological Inorganic Chemistry, State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Resource Utilization, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, Jilin 130022, China; University of Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing 100039, China.
authors.forename: Meng
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Chemical Biology, Division of Biological Inorganic Chemistry, State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Resource Utilization, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, Jilin 130022, China.
authors.forename: Jinsong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Ren
authors.affiliation: Laboratory of Chemical Biology, Division of Biological Inorganic Chemistry, State Key Laboratory of Rare Earth Resource Utilization, Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Changchun, Jilin 130022, China. Electronic address: xqu@ciac.ac.cn.
authors.forename: Xiaogang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Qu
mesh_terms: D002244:Carbon / Q000737:chemistry*; D002477:Cells / Q000737:chemistry / Q000378:metabolism; D003300:Copper / Q000032:analysis*; D006367:HeLa Cells; D006801:Humans; D052578:Ionic Liquids / Q000737:chemistry*; D007501:Iron / Q000032:analysis*; D049449:Luminescence; D057054:Molecular Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D009584:Nitrogen / Q000737:chemistry*; D013499:Surface Properties
chemical_list: D052578:Ionic Liquids; D002244:Carbon; D003300:Copper; D007501:Iron; D009584:Nitrogen
keywords: Carbon dots; Cell imaging; Detection; Ionic liquids