Facile Synthesis of “Boron-Doped” Carbon Dots and Their Application in Visible-Light-Driven Photocatalytic Degradation of Organic Dyes

Abstract

Carbon dots (C-dots) were facilely fabricated via a hydrothermal method and fully characterized. Our study shows that the as-synthesized C-dots are nontoxic, negatively charged spherical particles (average diameter 4.7 nm) with excellent water dispersion ability. Furthermore, the C-dots have a rich presence of surface functionalities such as hydroxyls and carboxyls as well as amines. The significance of the C-dots as highly efficient photocatalysts for rhodamine B (RhB) and methylene blue (MB) degradation was explored. The C-dots demonstrate excellent photocatalytic activity, achieving 100% of RhB and MB degradation within 170 min. The degradation rate constants for RhB and MB were 1.8 × 10−2 and 2.4 × 10−2 min−1, respectively. The photocatalytic degradation performances of the C-dots are comparable to those metal-based photocatalysts and generally better than previously reported C-dots photocatalysts. Collectively considering the excellent photocatalytic activity toward organic dye degradation, as well as the fact that they are facilely synthesized with no need of further doping, compositing, and tedious purification and separation, the C-dots fabricated in this work are demonstrated to be a promising alternative for pollutant degradation and environment protection.

Carbon Nanotubes, Graphene, and Carbon Dots as Electrochemical Biosensing Composites

“…Acid oxidation and photo-Fenton reactions were applied to form CDs by oxidation cleavage. Carbon dots can be readily synthesized using a microwave-assisted method [121,122] and hydrothermal method [123]. A study of the structure of carbon dots and their properties is very important to understand the structureproperty relationship in CDs.…”

Synergistic Effects of The Hybridization Between Boron-Doped Carbon Quantum Dots And n/n-Type g-C3N4 Homojunction For Boosted Visible-Light Photocatalytic Activity

“…The opposite direction in ow of charge carriers minimizes the recombination possibility for electrons and holes. Furthermore, the doping of CQDs with heteroatoms B enriched the presence of structural defects on the functionalized surface of BCQDs, effectively trapping more photoexcited charge carriers and hampered the recombination of electrons and holes (Peng et al, 2020).…”

Synthesis of Carbon Dots (Cds) and Determination of Optical Gap Energy With Tauc Plot Method

“…Making CDs can use materials from nature such as plants that have environmentally friendly properties, are cheap and easy to find and are available around our environment. Therefore, the fluorescence of CDs has great potential for application in photocatalysis (Peng et al, 2020), bioimaging (Dias et al, 2019), drug delivery systems (Sun et al, 2020), and other related fields. Very small CDs with large surface-to-volume ratios are expected to improve their performance in sensing (Sun et al, 2017) and catalytic applications (Hutton et al, 2017).…”