Novel Synthesis Without Separation and Purification Processes of Carbon Dots and Silver/Carbon Hybrid Nanoparticles

Abstract

This paper presents two bottom-up methods for the green synthesis of spherical carbon dots (Cdots) and silver/Cdots (Ag@Cdots) nanoparticles at alkaline medium. Both syntheses are carried out without separation and purification steps with a microwave exposure time between 30 and 60 s. In both case a natural product as glucose was used as precursor and capping agent. The obtained Cdots and Ag@Cdots hybrid are spherical in shape and monodisperse, with average particle size of lower than 10 nm and 13 nm respectively. In comparison with the methods previously reported, which need high energy consumption and/or long reaction time. The proposed methodologies are simple, low cost, environment-friendly and in accordance with green chemistry research. The morphology, composition and structure of the obtained nanoparticles were characterized by Zeta Potential and hydrodynamic size measurements, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), ATR-FTIR spectrophotometry and thermogavimetric analysis (TGA). The synthesized nanoparticles were applied to sense tetracycline residues taking into account their fluorescent properties.