Open AccessNitrogen-induced shift of photoluminescence from green to blue emission for xylose-derived carbon dots
Author(s) -
Shanshan Wang,
DongSheng Yang,
Fuqian Yang
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
nano express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2632-959X
DOI - 10.1088/2632-959x/aba771
Subject(s) - photoluminescence , materials science , annealing (glass) , xylose , nanomaterials , carbon fibers , hydrothermal carbonization , nanoparticle , nanotechnology , surface modification , carbonization , chemical engineering , optoelectronics , chemistry , composite number , organic chemistry , composite material , scanning electron microscope , fermentation , engineering
The discovery of carbon dots opens a new avenue to the applications of nanomaterials in biosensing and bioimaging. In this work, we develop simple methods to prepare carbon nanoparticles from xylose and to tune the photoluminescence (PL) characteristics of the xylose-derived carbon nanoparticles via the combination of three different processes: hydrothermal carbonization (HTC), annealing at 850 °C and laser ablation (LA) in a NH 4 OH solution. The HTC-synthesized carbon dots (CDs) exhibit green emission under the 365 nm UV excitation, the annealing of the HTC-synthesized CDs leads to complete loss of the PL characteristics, and the LA processing of the annealed carbon nanoparticles recovers the PL characteristics with blue shift in comparison to the HTC-synthesized CDs under the same UV excitation. the PL characteristics of the HTC-CDs and the LA-CDs are dependent on the π - π * transition of C-containing surface-functional groups and π - π * and n- π * transitions of N-containing surface-functional groups, respectively, which are responsible for the difference in the PL characteristics between the HTC-synthesized CDs and the LA-processed CDs. The approaches demonstrated in this work provide a viable method to introduce and tune surface-functional groups on the surface of carbon nanoparticles.