Multifunctional carbon dots for live cell staining and tissue engineering applications

Carbon dots (CDs) based nanomaterials have great potential in a wide range of biomedical areas, including bioimaging, biosensor, and tissue engineering. Thus, it is highly desired to develop novel cost‐effective, eco‐friendly and easy to scale‐up fabrication for CDs based nanomaterials for biomedical applications. Herein, we developed a facile synthesis of CDs by a one‐step hydrothermal method. The synthesized CDs showed stable photoluminescence, high‐resolution imaging of live cells and low cytotoxicity. Furthermore, the CDs were prepared to electrospun nanofiber mats (CDs‐NFMs), where enough carboxylic acid moieties and hydroxyls on the surface of the nanofibers, leading to excellent biocompatibility and fluorescence property. More importantly, cell proliferation on the CDs‐NFMs was much better than that on NFMs without CDs; moreover, CDs‐NFMs could also guide cells growth along the nanofibers and enhance the cellular activities, which indicated that the functional groups on the surface of the CDs play a critical role in supporting cellular activities. Combining with excellent fluorescence property, we anticipate that this finding greatly enhances great potential applications of CDs for cell culture, tissue engineering as well as other biomedical applications. POLYM. COMPOS., 39:73–80, 2018. © 2016 Society of Plastics Engineers