title: Hydrophilic and blue fluorescent N-doped carbon dots from tartaric acid and various alkylol amines under microwave irradiation.
abstract: The desired control of particle size, doping element composition, and surface structure of carbon dots (CDs) are vital for understanding the fluorescence mechanism and exploring their potential applications. Herein, nitrogen-doped CDs (N-doped CDs) have been synthesized with tartaric acid and various alkylol amines (monoethanolamine, biethanolamine and triethanolamine) under microwave irradiation. A systematic investigation was performed to characterize the N-doped CDs. It is found that with increasing nitrogen proportion, the fluorescent quantum yield and lifetime of N-doped CDs increases, whereas cell toxicity decreases. In other words, N-doped CDs synthesized by tartaric acid and monoethanolamine have the highest nitrogen content, the highest fluorescent quantum yield, the longest lifetime and the lowest cell toxicity. A corresponding mechanism has been proposed. Moreover, as-synthesized N-doped CDs have been applied for selectively detecting the Fe(3+) ion and writing letters as a fluorescent ink.
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory for Thin Film and Microfabrication of Ministry of Education, Department of Micro/Nano Electronics, School of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, P. R. China. zhiyang@sjtu.edu.cn yfzhang@sjtu.edu.cn.
authors.forename: Minghan
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Shusheng
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Zhi
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Mengjun
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Shu
authors.forename: Guili
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: He
authors.forename: Da
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Liling
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Li
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Daxiang
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Cui
authors.forename: Yafei
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Zhang