Carbon Dots: An Insight into Their Application in Heavy Metal Sensing

Abstract

The design of nanomaterials for application in diverse fields ranging from photovoltaic to fluorescence sensing is a research area of increasing interest. Recently, Quantum Dots (QDs), which are classified as semiconductor quantum dots (SQDs) and Carbon dots (CDs), have become a hot topic of investigation, owing to their extraordinary tunable fluorescence emission properties that render them excellent candidates for sensing metal ions. The detection of metal ions in aqueous solutions with high sensitivity is very important as these ions have toxicological and environmental impacts. In this short review, we have described the fluorescence emission properties of CDs and their application for the detection of different metal ions, such as Hg2+, Pb2+, Cu2+, Fe3+, Cd2+, and Cr6+.