Since their discovery, carbon dots (CDs) have been a promising nanomaterial in many fields including nanomedicine. Despite their promise in this area, there are many barriers to overcome for CDs to be approved for use in humans. One major obstacle to CDs’ approval is related to their poorly defined structure. A structural study of CDs will be presented in order to rectify this shortcoming. The properties of three different CDs prepared in our lab which have significant promise in terms of biomedical applications, black CDs (B-CDs), carbon nitride dots (CNDs), and yellow CDs (Y-CDs), were compared in order to develop a coherent structural model for each nanosystem. The absorption coefficients at a range of wavelengths were measured for each system and information from this data was extracted to show the level of disorder in each system with Y-CDs being the most ordered and B-CDs the least. Furthermore, extensive structural characterization was performed in order to derive structural information for each system. From these we found that B-CDs and CNDs are functionalized to a greater degree and are also more disordered and amorphous than Y-CDs. This wide array of techniques was used to develop a structural model consistent with our data and what is known for carbonic nanostructures. These models can be used in future work to analyze CDs’ emission properties and to better understand the structure-property relationship in CDs.

Development of structural models for three carbon dots

ACS Fall 2021

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