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Updated: Jan 24, 2026

Synthesis of Near-Infrared Emitting Gold Nanoclusters for Biological Applications
Published on: March 22, 2020
Yellow-emitting carbon dots for selective detecting 4-NP in aqueous media and living biological imaging
Min Tian1, Yaoming Liu2, Yingte Wang1
1School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Shanxi University, Taiyuan 030006, China.
Abstract:
A facile and economical hydrothermal approach is reported for preparing fluorescent nitrogen-doped carbon dots (N-CDs) via using o-phenylenediamine and dicyandiamine. Herein, the bright-yellow-emissive N-CDs are uniformly dispersed spherical nanoparticles with favorable solubility, superior photoluminescence and photobleaching resistance. The fluorescence intensity of N-CDs is linearly quenched by 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) over a concentration range of 0.1-39 μM, corresponding to a detection limit (LOD) of 0.05 μM. Based on this phenomenon, a 4-NP-detection method is exploited and applied to real samples analysis. The synthesized N-CDs are highly biocompatible and capable of biological imaging. Therefore, they are excellent candidates for live biological imaging.
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