Analytical Sciences

One-step Hydrothermal Synthesis of N-doped Fluorescent Carbon Dots from Fermented Rice with Highly Selective Characteristics for Label-free Detection of Fe³⁺ Ions and as Fluorescent Ink

Yanli CHEN,* Xueling SHAN,* Ding JIANG,* and Xiaoge LI**

*Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Advanced Catalytic Materials and Technology, School of Petrochemical Engineering, Changzhou University, Changzhou 213164, P. R. China
**Key Laboratory of Mesoscopic Chemistry of MOE, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210023, P. R. China

In our work, N-doped carbon dots (CDs) were synthesized by a facile hydrothermal method with fermented rice as the carbon source. The CDs show bright blue fluorescence, and the maximum emission wavelength was 380 nm with wavelength ranges from 320 to 560 nm. Interestingly, these as-prepared CDs show strong blue photoluminescent properties under the radiation with ultraviolet (UV) light. Moreover, it also exhibits good sensitive fluorescence detection for Fe³⁺ ions; the detection limit is 0.1 μM, which is significant fluorescence quenching based on CDs. Other representative metal ions were further tested to verify their selectivity, which provides a solid underpinning for the practical use in Fe³⁺ ions detection in real samples, e.g. underground water. In addition, the CDs work well as a fluorescent ink and can encrypt and store information.

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