Synthesis of ecofriendly fluorescent carbon dots and their biomedical and environmental applications

ABSTRACT

Green Synthesis of nanoparticles is an emerging field with enormous advantages over conventional synthesis methods. Herein we have reported a green method for the preparation of water soluble polydisperse carbon dots (c-dots) from Cocos nucifera frond pinnae by a modified version of the ‘single step hydrothermal carbonization’. C-dots having blue emission were obtained with this method and we further evaluated the effect of metal ions interactions on c-dots, as a sharp decrease in photoluminescence was observed. The synthesized c-dots were found bioactive against B.subtilis, M. smegmatis and S. aureus as determined by the well diffusion assay. We also explored nanotheranostic applications of c-dots as biosensor matrix in DNA hybridization sensor for pancreatic cancer and in bioimaging of cancer cells. This study demonstrated that c-dots can be explored for numerous biomedical and environmental applications in a variety of fields owing to the cost effective synthesis, biocompatibility and excellent physico-chemical properties.

KEYWORDS:

• Carbon dots
• green synthesis
• DNA hybridization sensor
• pancreatic cancer
• differential pulse voltammetry

Acknowledgments

Authors sincerely thank Dr. A. C. Anil, CSIR-National Institute of Oceanography, India, Prof. R. B. Tangsali and Prof. K. R. Priolkar, Department of Physics, Goa University, India for technical support. Dr Preeti Nigam Joshi would like to thank DST for funding research work as INSPIRE faculty grant. The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Department of Science and Technology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Govt of India (INSPIRE Award).