Carbon dots gels: synergistic platforms for advanced visual information storage

Carbon dots (CDs) embedded within gel matrices (CDs gels) have emerged as a novel class of intelligent luminescent materials, leveraging the exceptional stability, low toxicity, and environmental friendliness of CDs, combined with the moldability, flexibility, and multi-stimuli responsiveness of gels. Isolated CDs, while exhibiting stimulus-responsive luminescence (fluorescence, delayed-fluorescence, phosphorescence), suffer from severe fluorescence quenching in aggregated or dry states due to resonance energy transfer (RET) or π-π interactions. By embedding CDs into polymer gels, aggregation-induced quenching is suppressed, while mechanical robustness and dynamic responsiveness (e.g., pH/thermal/photo-triggered luminescence-deformation coupling) are enhanced. Leveraging these unique attributes, CDs gels composites demonstrate significant potential as core materials for next-generation intelligent information storage and interaction mediums, enabling dynamic, multidimensional encoding via spatial patterning and temporal luminescence/deformation changes, particularly for high-security anti-counterfeiting and sensing. In this review, we systematically elucidate the underlying synergistic mechanisms of CDs gels composites, introduce their unique properties and application prospects in advanced information technologies, summarize the latest research progress, and discuss key challenges regarding interfacial interactions and cross-scale performance regulation for future development.