Solid-Phase Synthesis of Highly Fluorescent Nitrogen-Doped Carbon Dots for Sensitive and Selective Probing Ferric Ions in Living Cells

Carbon quantum dots (C-Dots) have drawn extensive attention in recent years due to their stable physicochemical and photochemical properties. However, the development of nitrogen-doped carbon quantum dots (N-doped C-Dots) is still on its early stage. In this paper, a facile and high-output solid-phase synthesis approach was proposed for the fabrication of N-doped, highly fluorescent carbon quantum dots. The obtained N-doped C-Dots exhibited a strong blue emission with an absolute quantum yield (QY) of up to 31%, owing to fluorescence enhancement effect of introduced N atoms into carbon dots. The strong coordination of oxygen-rich groups on N-doped C-Dots to Fe(3+) caused fluorescence quenching via nonradiative electron-transfer, leading to the quantitative detection of Fe(3+). The probe exhibited a wide linear response concentration range (0.01-500 μM) to Fe(3+) with a detection limit of 2.5 nM. Significantly, the N-doped C-Dots possess negligible cytotoxicity, excellent biocompatibility, and high photostability. All these features are favorable for label-free monitoring of Fe(3+) in complex biological samples. It was then successfully applied for the fluorescence imaging of intracellular Fe(3+). As an efficient chemosensor, the N-doped C-Dots hold great promise to broaden applications in biological systems.