A high-yield and versatile method for the synthesis of carbon dots for bioimaging applications

High yield carbon dots (CDs) were synthesized on a large scale by a facile and versatile molten-salt method, using different precursors. The CDs not only exhibit efficient labelling ability in vitro, but could be chelated with gadolinum ions to constrcut Gd-CDs for dual-mode magnetic resonance and fluorescence imaging.