Medicinal plant-derived carbon dots: Preparation strategies, functional properties, and biomedical applications

With the expanding use of carbon dots (CDs) in biomedicine, researchers have leveraged abundant medicinal plant resources to develop an emerging class of carbon-based nanomaterials: medicinal plant-derived carbon dots (MP-CDs). MP-CDs combine the favorable features of CDs, including ultrasmall size, fluorescence, good biocompatibility, and tunable physicochemical properties, with the bioactivities associated with medicinal plant components, such as low toxicity, intrinsic pharmacological functions, and multitarget effects. Accordingly, MP-CDs show strong promise as multifunctional nanoplatforms for biomedical applications. This review summarizes precursor types and pretreatment strategies for MP-CDs synthesis, compares MP-CDs with medicinal plants and conventional CDs, and discusses recent advances in bioimaging, antitumor therapy, antioxidant and antibacterial applications, and biosensing. Current limitations and future directions are also addressed.