Chemiluminescent carbon dots: Synthesis, properties, and applications

As one of important approaches of light emission, chemiluminescence (CL) induced by chemical reactions has evoked considerable interest for its potential applications in chemical detection, bioanalysis, and cold light source. Carbon dots (CDs) are one kind of emerging carbon nanomaterials for promising CL due to their unique luminescent properties, such as high fluorescence quantum yield, tunable emission wavelength, high photostability, etc. With the special physicochemical property, CDs can take part in the CL reaction as oxidants, emitting species, energy acceptors of chemical reaction energy or even catalysis involving in different CL systems. With these novel influences in CL reaction, these CD-related CL systems have been applied in a broad range of areas. For the reason, CL CDs and their applications such as CL emitting species, catalyst, sensor, information encryption, photodynamic therapy and in-vitro and in-vivo bioimaging/biosensor are reviewed and discussed in this paper. Meanwhile, the challenges and future prospects of the CL CDs have been discussed and proposed.