Fluorescent carbon dots: facile synthesis at room temperature and its application for Fe sensing.

A new route for one-pot preparation of carbon dots (CDs) was developed at room temperature using PEG400 as both the carbon source and passitive agent. The new method possesses the advantages of facile, rapid, energy-saving, without any external stimulus and environment friendly. By changing the content of NaOH, the PEG400-CDs with blue-emitting, yellow-emitting, orange red-emitting and red-emitting were obtained, and the formation mechanism were carefully investigated. In addition, a sensitive fluorescence sensor were developed for Fe detection based on PEG400-CDs since the fluorescence of PEG400-CDs could be enhanced by Fe. It was found that there is a good linear relationship between the enhanced fluorescence and Fe concentration in the range of 0.5 to 2.0 μmol·L with the detection limit of 6.0 × 10 mol·L, and Fe in water samples was also determined with high accuracy and repeatability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]