Journal article
Laser irradiated vortex fluidic mediated synthesis of luminescent carbon nanodots under continuous flow
X Luo, AHM Al-Antaki, K Vimalanathan, J Moffatt, K Zheng, Y Zou, J Zou, X Duan, RN Lamb, S Wang, Q Li, W Zhang, CL Raston
Reaction Chemistry and Engineering | ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY | Published : 2018
DOI: 10.1039/c7re00197e
Abstract
Carbon nanodots (CDs) with size dependent fluorescence are synthesized from multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) under continuous flow in a vortex fluidic device (VFD) when irradiated by a pulsed laser with a wavelength of 1064 nm, without subsequent passivation procedures. The CDs have a relatively narrow size distribution averaging ca. 6 nm in diameter, and have low cytotoxicity and high colloidal stability with the highest emission intensity of the solution at 450 nm under a 345 nm excitation wavelength. Further downstream processing on the as-processed CDs revealed tunability of the emission from 450 nm to 325 nm.
Grants
Funding Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Australian Research Council and the Government of South Australia, and the Australian Microscopy & Microanalysis Research Facility (AMMRF) and the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF) for accessing microscopic facilities and the Edinburgh Instruments Spectrofluorimeter funded by ARC LIEF grant. The authors would also like to thank Dr. Chris Gibson, Mr. Yanting Yin, Dr. Muneer Syed Musthakahmed, Dr Georgios Tsiminis and Prof. Gregory A. Weiss for valuable discussions and help from Dr Jason Gascooke for some laser experiments, Ms Yvette DeGraaf for fluorescence microscopy, Ms Ashleigh Clapper for pH-responsive PL experiments and Dr. Faruq Ahmed on tissue culture studies.