Surface States Induced Photoluminescence Enhancement of Nitrogen-Doped Carbon Dots Via Post-Treatments

The tunable photoluminescence (PL) of nitrogen-doped carbon dots (NCDs) has attracted much attention in recent years while the specific mechanism is still in dispute. Herein, NCDs with yellow emission were successfully synthesized via a facile hydrothermal approach. Three kinds of post-treatment routes were investigated to verify the influence of surface states on the PL emission of NCDs including solvent-dependent, reduced-reaction and metal-enhanced effect. The interaction mechanism was studied by absorption spectrum, structural characterizations, steady-state and time-resolved spectroscopy. When dispersed in different solvents, the as-prepared NCDs show tunable emission and PL enhancement attributed to hydrogen bonding between solvents and NCDs. Besides, the addition of NaBH₄ can induce the reduction of the C=O bonds existing in original NCDs to C-O bonds and thus result in the enhancement of the intrinsic (n-π*) emission. Moreover, metal-enhanced fluorescence of NCDs can also be observed when adding Ag⁺ into initial NCD solution, which might be ascribed to aggregation-induced emission enhancement. These results for post-treated NCDs demonstrate that surface functional groups are responsible for PL emission and provide new possibilities like multi-image sensing and lighting application.