The effect of carbon chain length of starting materials on the formation of carbon dots and their optical properties

Carbon dots (CDs) have attracted increasing attention due to their high performances and potential applications in wide range of areas. However, their emission mechanism is not clear so far. In order to reveal more factors contributing to the emission of CDs, the effect of carbon chain length of starting materials on the formation of CDs and their optical properties was experimentally investigated in this work. In order to focus on the effect of carbon chain length, the starting materials with C, O, N in fully identical forms and only carbon chain lengths being different were selected for synthesizing CDs, including citric acid (CA) and adipic acid (AA) as carbon sources, and diamines with different carbon chain lengths (H2N(CH2)nNH2, n = 2, 4, 6) as nitrogen sources, as well as ethylenediamine (EDA) as nitrogen source and diacids with different carbon chain lengths (HOOC(CH2)nCOOH, n = 0, 2, 4, 6) as carbon sources. Therefore, the effect of carbon chain length of starting materials on the formation and optical properties of CDs can be systematically investigated by characterizing and comparing the structures and optical properties of as-prepared nine types of CDs. Moreover, the density of –NH2 on the surface of the CDs was quantitatively detected by a spectrophotometry so as to elucidate the relationship between the –NH2 related surface state and the optical properties.