Fluorescent cellulose-based hydrogel with carboxymethyl cellulose and carbon quantum dots for information storage and fluorescent anti-counterfeiting

With the development of science and technology, various counterfeit and inferior products are emerging in endlessly, which makes people more and more important to the development of anti-counterfeiting technology. Materials capable of fluorescence imaging and biocompatibility are becoming popular in the field of anti-counterfeiting. Herein, we used carbon quantum dots, which had the characteristics of biocompatibility, non-toxicity, and high-efficiency luminescence, as the luminescence center, and introduced them into the carboxymethyl cellulose-based hydrogel to prepare a novel fluorescent cellulose-based hydrogel. The hydrogel displayed a bright blue color fluorescence under UV light, and Fe3+ could quench the fluorescence, thereby realizing information storage and anti-counterfeiting. Moreover, the stored information could be erased by ascorbic acid and reused many times. The results demonstrated that the fluorescent hydrogel had bright prospect for recyclable information storage and anti-counterfeiting.