Carbon Dots with an Emission in the Near Infrared Produced from Organic Dyes in Porous Silica Microsphere Templates

Zero-Dimensional Carbon Nanomaterials for Fluorescent Sensing and Imaging

Advances in nanotechnology and nanomaterials have attracted considerable interest and play key roles in scientific innovations in diverse fields. In particular, increased attention has been focused on carbon-based nanomaterials exhibiting diverse extended structures and unique properties. Among these materials, zero-dimensional structures, including fullerenes, carbon nano-onions, carbon nanodiamonds, and carbon dots, possess excellent bioaffinities and superior fluorescence properties that make these structures suitable for application to environmental and biological sensing, imaging, and therapeutics. This review provides a systematic overview of the classification and structural properties, design principles and preparation methods, and optical properties and sensing applications of zero-dimensional carbon nanomaterials. Recent interesting breakthroughs in the sensitive and selective sensing and imaging of heavy metal pollutants, hazardous substances, and bioactive molecules as well as applications in information encryption, super-resolution and photoacoustic imaging, and phototherapy and nanomedicine delivery are the main focus of this review. Finally, future challenges and prospects of these materials are highlighted and envisaged. This review presents a comprehensive basis and directions for designing, developing, and applying fascinating fluorescent sensors fabricated based on zero-dimensional carbon nanomaterials for specific requirements in numerous research fields.

Carbon dots: Types, preparation, and their boosted antibacterial activity by photoactivation. Current status and future perspectives

Carbon dots (CDs) correspond to carbon-based materials (CBM) with sizes usually below 10 nm. These nanomaterials exhibit attractive properties such us low toxicity, good stability, and high conductivity, which have promoted their thorough study over the past two decades. The current review describes four types of CDs: carbon quantum dots (CQDs), graphene quantum dots (GQDs), carbon nanodots (CNDs), and carbonized polymers dots (CPDs), together with the state of the art of the main routes for their preparation, either by "top-down" or "bottom-up" approaches. Moreover, among the various usages of CDs within biomedicine, we have focused on their application as a novel class of broad-spectrum antibacterial agents, concretely, owing their photoactivation capability that triggers an enhanced antibacterial property. Our work presents the recent advances in this field addressing CDs, their composites and hybrids, applied as photosensitizers (PS), and photothermal agents (PA) within antibacterial strategies such as photodynamic therapy (PDT), photothermal therapy (PTT), and synchronic PDT/PTT. Furthermore, we discuss the prospects for the possible future development of large-scale preparation of CDs, and the potential for these nanomaterials to be employed in applications to combat other pathogens harmful to human health. This article is categorized under: Therapeutic Approaches and Drug Discovery > Nanomedicine for Infectious Disease.

Editorial for Special Issue "Luminescent Colloidal Nanocrystals"

The field of luminescent colloidal nanocrystals and the numerous nanosystems based on them has recently made a rapid breakthrough from initial basic research to real applications and devices [...].

Review on Fluorescent Carbon/Graphene Quantum Dots: Promising Material for Energy Storage and Next-Generation Light-Emitting Diodes

Carbon/graphene quantum dots are 0D fluorescent carbon materials with sizes ranging from 2 nm to around 50 nm, with some attractive properties and diverse applications. Different synthesis routes, bandgap variation, higher stability, low toxicity with tunable emission, and the variation of physical and chemical properties with change in size have drawn immense attention to its potential application in different optoelectronics-based materials, especially advanced light-emitting diodes and energy storage devices. WLEDs are a strong candidate for the future of solid-state lighting due to their higher luminance and luminous efficiency. High-performance batteries play an important part in terms of energy saving and storage. In this review article, the authors provide a comparative analysis of recent and ongoing advances in synthesis (top-down and bottom-up), properties, and wide applications in different kinds of next-generation light-emitting diodes such as WLEDs, and energy storage devices such as batteries (Li-B, Na-B) and supercapacitors. Furthermore, they discuss the potential applications and progress of carbon dots in battery applications such as electrode materials. The authors also summarise the developmental stages and challenges in the existing field, the state-of-the-art of carbon/graphene quantum dots, and the potential and possible solutions for the same.