A facile method to prepare polymer functionalized carbon dots inspired by the mussel chemistry for LED application

Abstract We developed a simple way to prepare the polymer functionalized N -doping carbon dots (CDs) inspired by the mussel chemistry for white LED application. The N -doping CDs were decorated by catechol-terminated hydrophilic poly(poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate ( PPEGMA) and hydrophobic polystyrene (PS) through Schiff base condensation/Michael addition reaction (CD@PEGMA and CD@PS), which owns two advantages: (1) polymer anchored CDs improved the optical properties of pure CDs; (2) hydrophobic PS could transfer hydrophilic CDs into nonpolar organic solvents to expand the application range of water-soluble CDs. The white-light bulk nanohybrid was obtained via in-situ polymerization of styrene monomers containing CD@PS as blue component and 5-(2-methacryloyl-ethyloxymethyl)-8-quinolinol (MQ) coordinated CdSe/ZnS quantum dots (QDs) as green and red components. The warm white light-emitting diode (WLED) was also fabricated based on the white bulk nanomaterials with CIE coordinate (0.32, 0.31) and the correlated color temperature 6250 K.