Multifarious roles of glucose derived carbon dots in heavy metal ion detection and solid polymer electrolyte applications

Abstract

Carbon nanotechnology has been at the forefront of research in materials newlinescience for the past few decades due to the development of a multitude of newlinecarbon nanostructures and its legions of applications. Among these, newlinefluorescent carbon nanoparticles having quasi-spherical shapes and sizes newlineroughly in the range of 10 nm or less known as carbon dots(CDs) have gained newlinepredominance ever since their discovery in 2004. CDs are known for its newlineunique properties such as stable photoluminescence, excellent newlinebiocompatibility, non-toxicity, high photo-bleaching resistivity and chemical newlinestability to exist in the colloidal solution state. They are composed of carbon newlinecores that are either sp2 newline/sp3 newlinehybridized, aggregated or cross linked with newlineabundant oxygen rich functional groups on the surface. They are suitable newlinealternatives to conventional inorganic semiconductor quantum dots and are newlinefound to be excellent tools in bio-imaging, catalysis, chemical sensing, and newlineoptoelectronic applications. The most intriguing property of these newlinenanomaterials is their photoluminescence which can be tuned according to newlinethe size and the various functional groups attached to the surface. Different newlinestrategies of top-down and bottom-up methods have been adopted to newlinesynthesize CDs.The thesis entitled Multifarious roles of glucose derived carbon dots in newlineheavy metal ion detection and solid polymer electrolyte applications newlineexplores a sustainable approach for the synthesis of CDs from glucose and newlineembedding these CDs into a benign polymer polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) to newlineform composite films with new functionalities that can be used for newlinemultifarious applications in heavy metal ion detection based on metal ion newlineinduced photoluminescence quenching and in solid polymer electrolytes as newlinefillers, utilizing the nanosize of CDs, for enhanced ionic conductivity towards newlineachieving better performance in energy storage devices.