Ionic liquid mediated carbon dots: Preparations, properties and applications

Abstract As a new nanostructure of carbon materials family, carbon dots (CDs) have attracted extensive attentions attributing to their excellent properties. Carbon sources, passivating agent, and the preparation conditions have great influence on the properties of CDs. Ionic liquids (ILs), consist of organic cations and small organic or inorganic anions, have been used as carbon sources, solvents and modifiers in the preparation of CDs due to their unique physico-chemical properties. ILs can not only mediate the physico-chemical properties of CDs, including size and morphology, hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity, surface functional groups, but also play a key role in the adjusting/regulating the optical features and biocompatibility of CDs. This review discusses the up-to-date progress for the preparation of ionic liquid mediated CDs (IL-CDs), as well as the structure-activity/property relationship between ILs and CDs, and the employment of the IL-CDs as fluorescent probes for sensing and bioimaging purposes.