Open Access

ARTICLE

Synthesis of Carbon dots from Biomass Chenpi for the Detection of Hg²⁺

Jun Xiang^1,2,*, Xiaoqing Chen¹, Qi Liu¹, Huihua Jing², Tongqiang Chen², Wanli Tang², Wenyang Xu²

1 Pharmaceutical and Food Molecular Science Research Team, Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Central South University, Changsha, 410083, China
2 Department of Food Testing and Research, Hunan Testing Institute of Product and Commodity Supervision, Changsha, 410007, China

* Corresponding Author: Jun Xiang. Email:

(This article belongs to this Special Issue: Carbon-Based Nanomaterials from Renewable Materials: Synthesis, Properties and Applications)

Journal of Renewable Materials 2023, 11(10), 3739-3750. https://doi.org/10.32604/jrm.2023.028090

Received 29 November 2022; Accepted 26 January 2023; Issue published 10 August 2023

Abstract

Biomass-derived carbon dots (C-dots) are considered a very important carbon material in metal ion detection of their small environmental impact, simple preparation process, and relatively low cost. A green approach for synthesizing biomass-derived C-dots from Chenpi using a hydrothermal method without further processing is proposed in the present study. The as-synthesized C-dots show excellent fluorescence properties, superior resistance to UV irradiation photobleaching, and high photostability in salt-containing solutions. The C-dots were used in the form of label-free fluorescent probes for sensitively detecting Hg²⁺ selectively. The outcome relationship behaved linearly and was established based on a given range between 10–300 nM concentration, with a detection limit of 7.0 nM. This green strategy obtains a high C-dot quantum yield of 10.8% and satisfactory results in detecting Hg²⁺ in actual water samples.

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