Turning food waste into value-added carbon dots for sustainable food packaging application: A review

Green Fluorescent Carbon Dots with Critically Controlled Surface States: Make Silk Shine via Feeding Silkworms

“…Among the reported additives, carbon dots (CDs), a new type of zero-dimensional carbon nanoparticles with excellent optical properties and good biocompatibility, have shown unique advantages beyond their counterparts. , The synthetic routes of CDs include “top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches, and the latter has been adopted more frequently in recent years. − The precursors for CDs include various biomass, small molecules, macromolecules, and polymers. − In the family of fluorescent materials, CDs have better photostability and chemical stability than organic dyes and possess lower biotoxicity and easier degradation than metal-based quantum dots/metal oxide nanoparticles. − Moreover, the structure of precursors, reactant ratio, solvent, temperature, and time can be finely adjusted to regulate the fluorescence emission wavelength, quantum yield, particle size, and surface functional groups of CDs. − Although CDs are commonly used in LED lighting, biosensing, imaging, and fluorescence analyses, their tunable fluorescence properties and low toxicity make it possible to produce on a large scale for feeding silkworms to obtain fluorescent silk. − So far, there are only several reports on raising silkworms with CDs. In 2019, blue fluorescent CDs were fed to silkworm to obtain modified silk with increased mechanical properties and intrinsic fluorescence, but the fluorescence of such silk could only be seen under a laser confocal microscope .…”