Preparation of Iron‐Doped Carbon Dots and Their Application in Photocatalytic Reduction of Carbon Dioxide

Abstract

Photocatalytic carbon dioxide (CO2) reduction technology is considered a promising approach to alleviate greenhouse gas emissions in the earth's atmosphere. Carbon dots (CDs), which possess good optical properties, are of keen interest in the field of photocatalysis. Iron (Fe), a transition metal element with vacant 3d orbital that contributes to the electron‐transfer process, is a promising metal dopant for CDs that allows for the preparation of multifunctional CDs. Fe‐doped carbon dots (Fe−CDs) were synthesized using ethylenediamine tetraacetic acid disodium (EDTA‐2Na) and ferric chloride (FeCl3 ⋅ 6H2O) through a simple one‐step hydrothermal method. The chemical structure of the obtained Fe−CDs was studied, and their activity for the photocatalytic reduction of CO2 was tested. The results show that Fe doping amount of 13.0 wt.% is the most favorable for the photocatalytic reaction. The maximum photocatalytic reduction of CO2 to methanol reaches 654.28 μmol ⋅ g−1 ⋅ h−1 within 6 h, which is about 2.6 times of the methanol yield of CDs, which is attributed to high electron transfer rate of Fe dopant.

Current trends in carbon-based quantum dots development from solid wastes and their applications

“…Lu et al ( 2015 ) reported better photocatalytic activity of zinc-porphyrin modified GQDs compared to zinc-porphyrin towards the degradation of methylene blue (MB) under visible-light. On the other hand, Dang et al ( 2022 ) used Fe-doped CQDs to generate methanol by CO 2 reduction. A three-fold increase in photocatalytic activity of S and N co-doped CQDs with TiO 2 NPs was observed towards acid red 88 degradation (Rahbar et al 2019 ).…”

An overview on animal/human biomass-derived carbon dots for optical sensing and bioimaging applications

“…Consequently, the Fe-CDs showed 2.6-times greater photocatalytic reduction ability (CO 2 to methanol) compared to the undoped CDs. 110 Zhang et al 111 used the traditional Chinese herb mulberry together with MgCl 2 -$6H 2 O to synthesize Mg-CDs through the HT technique (200 °C, 10 h). The Mg-CDs were applied for in vitro osteoblastic differentiation and matrix mineralization.…”