Free-Radical-Assisted Rapid Synthesis of Graphene Quantum Dots and Their Oxidizability Studies

Synthesis of Graphene Quantum Dots Enhanced Nano Ca(OH)2 from Ammoniated CaCl2

Ca(OH)₂ nanoparticles are effective materials for cultural heritage restoration, hazardous substance absorption and photocatalyst. However, many methods are complex, and the particle sizes are usually above 80-100 nm, involving mediocre efficacy for application in the stone restoration field. In this work, Nano Ca(OH)₂ with diameters less than 70 nm and composited with Graphene Quantum Dots (GQDs) were successfully synthesized in aqueous media. The morphology and structure of the nanoparticles were investigated with TEM, HRTEM, XRD, Raman and FTIR. The particle size distribution and relative kinetic stability of the Ca(OH)₂ in ethanol were performed using a laser particle size analyzer and spectrophotometer. Firstprinciple calculations based on the spin-polarized density functional theory (DFT) were carried out to study the reaction process and combination model. The nanoparticles, as prepared, are composed of primary hexagonal crystals and high ammoniated precursors, which have a positive effect on reducing the grain size, and interacted with the GQDs hybrid process. According to the First-principle calculations results, the energy variation of the whole reaction process and the bonding mode between Ca(OH)₂ and GQDs can be understood better.

Eco-Friendly and Sustainable Pathways to Photoluminescent Carbon Quantum Dots (CQDs)

Carbon quantum dots (CQDs), a new family of photoluminescent 0D NPs, have recently received a lot of attention. They have enormous future potential due to their unique properties, which include low toxicity, high conductivity, and biocompatibility and accordingly can be used as a feasible replacement for conventional materials deployed in various optoelectronic, biomedical, and energy applications. The most recent trends and advancements in the synthesizing and setup of photoluminescent CQDs using environmentally friendly methods are thoroughly discussed in this review. The eco-friendly synthetic processes are emphasized, with a focus on biomass-derived precursors. Modification possibilities for creating newer physicochemical properties among different CQDs are also presented, along with a brief conceptual overview. The extensive amount of writings on them found in the literature explains their exceptional competence in a variety of fields, making these nanomaterials promising alternatives for real-world applications. Furthermore, the benefits, drawbacks, and opportunities for CQDs are discussed, with an emphasis on their future prospects in this emerging research field.

Turning single bubble sonoluminescence from blue in pure water to green by adding trace amount of carbon nanodots

Sonoluminescence (SL) is an interesting physical effect which can convert acoustic energy into light pulses. Up to now, the microscopic mechanism of the SL has not yet been fully clear. It is known that hydroxyl radicals play the important role for SL from water. In this work, we take advantage of carbon nano-dots (CNDs) as free radical captors to modulate the hydroxyl radicals (OH) in SL effect. Through studying the single bubble SL (SBSL) from CND aqueous solution (CNDAS) with trace amount of CNDs, we find that the color of SBSL is tuned dramatically from blue in water to green in CNDAS. Two different SL mechanisms can be identified from emission spectrum. One comes from blackbody-like radiation and another is attributed from the characteristic emission with identified peaks. The decrease in the yield of H2O2 in the presence of CNDs suggests the modulation effect on SL via OH interacting with CNDs. By comparison of the CNDs before and after sonication, it is found that hydroxyl radicals generated during SL can take part in the chain-like oxidation of the chemical groups attached to the CNDs to form larger amount of carboxyl groups. The blackbody temperature of blackbody-like radiation decreases from 15,600 K in water to 11,300 K in CNDAS. Moreover, the emission from hydroxyl radicals and two new luminescent centers related to carboxyl groups are introduced in SL from CNDAS. These important and interesting findings indicate that by adding trace amount of CNDs in water, the effect of SBSL can be significantly modulated, which can provide a macroscopic phenomenon for gaining an insight into the microscopic mechanism of the SL effect.

Mitochondria-Specific Agents for Photodynamic Cancer Therapy: A Key Determinant to Boost the Efficacy

Mitochondria-targeted photodynamic therapy (Mt-PDT), which enables the photogenerated cytotoxic oxygen species with fatal oxidative damage to block mitochondrial functions, has been considered as a promising method to enhance the anticancer effectiveness. Aiming at the challenges of PDT, in the past few decades, numerous mitochondria-targeting molecular agents have been developed to boost the PDT efficacy via directly destroying the mitochondria or activating mitochondria-mediated cell death pathways. Herein, a review for recent advances of Mt-PDT is highlighted including: mitochondrial targeting design principles and strategies, therapeutic performance of mitochondria-targeted agents-mediated PDT as well as the agent-free Mt-PDT. In addition, it puts together the achievements of the combinatory mitochondria-anchoring PDT and other anticancer strategies, demonstrating the advantages provided by Mt-PDT. The existing challenges are discussed and future settlements for the development of mitochondria-specific agents are also forecasted.

A polyimide-pyrolyzed carbon waste approach for the scalable and controlled electrochemical preparation of size-tunable graphene

Carbon materials are widely used in numerous fields, thus changing our lives. With the increasing consumption of carbon-based products, the disposal of consequent wastes has become a challenge due to their inert nature, which is hard to degrade, burn, or melt. Here, a recyclable strategy is proposed to deal with the explosive growth of carbon wastes. Through a fast and clean electrochemical method, carbon wastes are converted into functional building blocks of high value, such as graphene and graphene quantum dots (GQDs). For typical polyimide-pyrolyzed carbon (PPC), we establish the relationship between the chemical structure of raw materials and the characteristics of graphene products, including size and yield. The size-tunable graphene ranging from 3 nm to tens of micrometers is prepared by tuning the sp3/sp2 carbon ratio of PPC from 0.5 to 0 at adjustable temperatures (800 °C-2800 °C). Significantly, PPC with a bicontinuous structure (comprising sp2 and sp3) was efficiently cut into GQDs in 2 h with a high yield of 98%. Our protocol offers great potential for the scale-up preparations and applications of GQDs. Besides, we demonstrate that the GQDs performed well as dispersants to disperse hydrophobic carbon nanotubes (0.6 mg mL-1) in water and improved the gravimetric capacitance of graphene-based supercapacitors by 79.4% with 3% GQDs added as nano-fillers.

Recent Advances on Graphene Quantum Dots for Bioimaging Applications

Being a zero-dimensional (0D) nanomaterial of the carbon family, graphene quantum dots (GQDs) showed promising biomedical applications owing to their ultra-small size, non-toxicity, biocompatibility, excellent photo stability, tunable fluorescence, and water solubility, etc., thus capturing a considerable attention in biomedical field. This review summarizes the recent advances made in the research field of GQDs and place special emphasis on their bioimaging applications. We briefly introduce the synthesis strategies of GQDs, including top-down and bottom-up strategies. The bioimaging applications of GQDs are also discussed in detail, including optical [fluorescence (FL)], two-photon FL, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and dual-modal imaging. In the end, the challenges and future prospects to advance the clinical bioimaging applications of GQDs have also been addressed.

Nanomaterials for Nanotheranostics: Tuning Their Properties According to Disease Needs

Nanotheranostics is one of the biggest scientific breakthroughs in nanomedicine. Most of the currently available diagnosis and therapies are invasive, time-consuming, and associated with severe toxic side effects. Nanotheranostics, on the other hand, has the potential to bridge this gap by harnessing the capabilities of nanotechnology and nanomaterials for combined therapeutics and diagnostics with markedly enhanced efficacy. However, nanomaterial applications in nanotheranostics are still in its infancy. This is due to the fact that each disease has a particular microenvironment with well-defined characteristics, which promotes deeper selection criteria of nanomaterials to meet the disease needs. In this review, we have outlined how nanomaterials are designed and tailored for nanotheranostics of cancer and other diseases such as neurodegenerative, autoimmune (particularly on rheumatoid arthritis), and cardiovascular diseases. The penetrability and retention of a nanomaterial in the biological system, the therapeutic strategy used, and the imaging mode selected are some of the aspects discussed for each disease. The specific properties of the nanomaterials in terms of feasibility, physicochemical challenges, progress in clinical trials, its toxicity, and their future application on translational medicine are addressed. Our review meticulously and critically examines the applications of nanotheranostics with various nanomaterials, including graphene, across several diseases, offering a broader perspective of this emerging field.

Electrochemistry in Carbon-based Quantum Dots

Electrochemistry belongs to an important branch of chemistry that deals with the chemical changes produced by electricity and the production of electricity by chemical changes. Therefore, it can not only act a powerful tool for materials synthesis, but also offer an effective platform for sensing and catalysis. As extraordinary zero-dimensional materials, carbon-based quantum dots (CQDs) have been attracting tremendous attention due to their excellent properties such as good chemical stability, environmental friendliness, nontoxicity and abundant resources. Compared with the traditional methods for the preparation of CQDs, electrochemical (EC) methods offer advantages of simple instrumentation, mild reaction conditions, low cost and mass production. In return, CQDs could provide cost-effective, environmentally friendly, biocompatible, stable and easily-functionalizable probes, modifiers and catalysts for EC sensing. However, no specific review has been presented to systematically summarize both aspects until now. In this review, the EC preparation methods of CQDs are critically discussed focusing on CQDs. We further emphasize the applications of CQDs in EC sensors, electrocatalysis, biofuel cells and EC flexible devices. This review will further the experimental and theoretical understanding of the challenges and future prospective in this field, open new directions on exploring new advanced CQDs in EC to meet the high demands in diverse applications.

Chlorine-Doped Graphene Quantum Dots with Enhanced Anti- and Pro-Oxidant Properties

Production or elimination of highly reactive oxygen species is critical in antioxidant, photodynamic, therapeutic, and antibacterial applications. Recent studies have demonstrated that graphene quantum dots (GQDs) possess anti- and pro-oxidant properties simultaneously. However, their efficiency is low. Here, we report chlorine-doped GQDs (Cl-GQDs) with a tunable Cl doping amount and improved anti- and pro-oxidant activities. The scavenging performance and the free radical-produced efficiency of Cl-GQDs are about 7-fold and 3-fold, respectively, higher than those of the undoped GQDs. Meanwhile, Cl-GQDs are considered to be promising for antibacterial applications because of their enhanced singlet oxygen generating ability. We hope that this study could provide a new strategy to develop nanomaterials for application in the anti- and pro-oxidant field.

Optimizing oxygen functional groups in graphene quantum dots for improved antioxidant mechanism

The development of new antioxidants with quick absorbance of free radicals and excellent biocompatibility has drawn intensive attention in recent years. Graphene quantum dots (GQDs) seemed to be one of the most promising antioxidants because of their appropriate antioxidant activity, unique structure, excellent biocompatibility, and low toxicity. However, the relatively low antioxidant activity in comparison with inorganic semiconductor materials and unclear antioxidant mechanism limited their application in cells. In this paper, we further explored their antioxidant mechanism by focusing on the relationship between antioxidant activity and surface oxygen functional groups. The total oxygen fraction was controlled by post-preparation reduction using NaBH₄ and the type of oxygen functional groups was adjusted by free radicals during the preparation of GQDs. The degree of reduction and content of surface oxygen groups were determined by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and the antioxidant activity was obtained by scavenging of 1,1-diphenyl-2-picryl-hydrazyl (DPPH˙) and hydroxyl (˙OH) free radicals. Based on the analysis of XPS, Raman, and Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) spectra, the relationship between antioxidant activity and the surface oxygen groups of GQDs was obtained, and the antioxidant mechanism of GQDs was revealed with a particular specification of each oxygen group in the antioxidant activity of GQDs, meanwhile, the biocompatibility of GQDs has been demonstrated by cytotoxicity tests. We hope that our results will provide a new insight into a complete antioxidant mechanism of GQDs.

Electrochemical Cutting in Weak Aqueous Electrolytes: The Strategy for Efficient and Controllable Preparation of Graphene Quantum Dots

The controllable and efficient electrochemical preparation of highly crystalline graphene quantum dots (GQDs) in an aqueous system is still challenging. Here, we developed a weak electrolyte-based (typically an ammonia solution) electrochemical method to enhance the oxidation and cutting process and therefore achieve a high yield of GQDs. The yield of GQDs (3-8 nm) is 28%, approximately 28 times higher than the yield of GQDs prepared by other strong electrolytes. The whole preparation process can be accomplished within 2 h because of the effective free radical oxidation process and the suppressed intercalation-induced exfoliation in weakly ionized aqueous electrolytes. The GQDs also showed excellent crystallinity which is obviously better than the crystallinity of GQDs obtained via bottom-up approaches. Moreover, amino-functionalization of GQDs can be realized by manipulating the electrolyte concentration. We further demonstrate that the proposed method can also be expanded to other weak electrolytes (such as HF and H₂S) and different anode precursor materials (such as graphene/graphite papers, carbon fibers, and carbon nanotubes).

Determination of graphene's edge energy using hexagonal graphene quantum dots and PM7 method

Graphene quantum dots (GQDs) are important for a variety of applications and designs, and the shapes of GQDs rely on the energy of their boundaries.