Nitrogen-doped carbon dots based on arginine and maleic acid for fabrication of PVA composite films and iron fluorescence probes

Abstract Carbon dots (CDs) have a wide application prospect in biomedical, fluorescent probes and other fields due to their abundant advantages, such as excellent optical properties, low toxicity, etc... In this essay, carbon dots with nitrogen-doped (MA-CDs) carrying good biocompatibility and relatively high absolute fluorescence quantum yield (12.37%) was prepared by microwave synthesis using maleic acid with good conjugated structure as carbon precursor and arginine with the highest content of nitrogen in amino acids as nitrogen source. The UV-vis absorption spectra and time-resolved spectra show that it has dual light centers, and the luminescence center 2 has a long fluorescence lifetime (25.7602ns). In addition, MA-CDs has excellent water solubility, good photobleaching resistance, and good stability in physiological environment. Based on this, we successfully prepared MA-CDs and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) composite films and constructed iron ion fluorescence probes with wide linear range.