Facile synthesis of fluorescent carbon dots using watermelon peel as a carbon source

Abstract The synthesis of water-soluble fluorescent carbon dots (C-dots) has received much attention recently. Here, high quality fluorescent C-dots have been synthesized through low-temperature carbonization and simple filtration using watermelon peel, a waste and reproducible raw resource, as a novel carbon resource. This facile approach allows large-scale production of aqueous C-dots dispersions without any post-treatment process. The as-prepared C-dots possess small particle sizes (~ 2.0 nm), strong blue luminescence, acceptable fluorescence lifetime and good stability in a wide range of pH values (pH 2.0–11.0) and at a high salt concentration. Besides, the obtained C-dots have been successfully applied in live cell imaging, indicating these carbon nanoparticles can serve as high-performance optical imaging probes.