Carbonized Polymer Dots: A Class of Highly Functionalized Nanoparticles with Polymeric Characteristics

As emerging carbon-based nanoparticles, carbon dots (CDs) have attracted widespread attention in recent decades. Among the large family of CDs, carbonized polymer dots (CPDs) exhibit amazing charm due to their unique highly functionalized structure and typical polymeric characteristics. The polymerization and crosslinking of precursors during the synthesis process lead to the formation of a distinctive core-shell structure in CPDs, which consists of a hydrophobic carbon core and a polymer shell layer with entangled chain segments. In previous research, CPDs have been highlighted from the perspective of their outstanding photoluminescence properties. However, few discussions or summaries are available concerning the polymeric characteristics of CPDs. Herein, we try to provide a detailed discussion of the typical polymeric characteristics of CPDs and related applications. We first make an introduction to CPD synthesis in terms of the formation process, synthetic methods, and precursor varieties. Subsequently, we give a summary of several typical polymeric characteristics of CPDs and relevant characterization techniques. Furthermore, we list various applications of CPDs related to polymer characteristics, including sensing, optoelectronic devices, anti-counterfeiting, and so on. Finally, we put forward some reflections and perspectives for the development of CPDs.