Regulating the photoluminescence of carbon dots via a green fluorine-doping-derived surface-state-controlling strategy

Herein, we report a green surface-state-controlling strategy to achieve the regulation of the photoluminescence (PL) properties of carbon dots (CDs) via fluorine (F)-doping techniques. Two types of F-doped CDs with different F contents (FCDs1 and FCDs2) were prepared with o-phenylenediamine and its derivative as carbon precursors via different F-doping routes at room temperature. An obvious red-shift of PL for both the obtained CD products was achieved, due to the narrower band gap induced by F-doping. FCDs1 exhibits favorable solid-state PL behaviors due to the alleviated aggregation-induced quenching attributed to the element-dilution effect and the formation of hydrogen bonds, and is used for Latent fingerprint identification with high resolution. FCDs2 with a high F content is characterized with a prominent red-shift of 70 nm and used as a powerful probe for the quantitative detection of cobalamin based on inner filter effects, giving a Limit of detection of 0.15 mu moL L-1.

Automated summary

In this study, a green surface-state-controlling strategy was used to regulate the photoluminescence properties of carbon dots through fluorine (F)-doping techniques. Two types of F-doped carbon dots with different F contents were prepared, resulting in a red-shift of photoluminescence due to the narrower band gap induced by F-doping. FCDs1 showed favorable solid-state PL behaviors and was used for latent fingerprint identification, while FCDs2 with high F content was used as a powerful probe for the quantitative detection of cobalamin.