Spontaneous formation of carbon dots helps to distinguish molecular fluorophores species

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleResearchpeer-review

Authors

  • I. Jénnifer Gómez
  • Manuel Vazquez Sulleiro
  • Naděžda Pizúrová
  • Antonin Bednařík
  • Petr Lepcio
  • Jan Preisler
  • Lenka Zajickkova

External Organisational units

  • Ciudad Universitaria de Cantoblance
  • Masaryk University
  • Institute of Physics of Materials of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
  • Brno University of Technology

Abstract

Carbon dots (CDs) display photophysical features that appear similar, if not identical, despite the variety of synthesis protocols used to obtain them. The unique design of CDs toward the desired properties requires an exhaustive understanding of the structure itself. This work offers a fundamental insight into the structure and formation of the carbon dots that allows distinguishing the existence of molecular fluorophore species. Remarkably, density functional theory calculations of the elucidated structures support the spontaneous formation of a compact network of molecular species. In addition, as a proof-of-principle, our work comprehensively studies the photoluminescence properties (i.e., concentration, pH and solvent dependencies), which pave the way for developing CD-based logic gate fluorescent sensors.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Article number155536
Number of pages9
JournalApplied surface science
Volume610.2023
Issue number1 February
Early online date3 Nov 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Feb 2023