Johny, A.; Pinto da Silva, L.; Pereira, C.M.; Esteves da Silva, J.C.G. Sustainability Assessment of Highly Fluorescent Carbon Dots Derived from Eucalyptus Leaves. Environments 2024, 11, 6, doi:10.3390/environments11010006.
Johny, A.; Pinto da Silva, L.; Pereira, C.M.; Esteves da Silva, J.C.G. Sustainability Assessment of Highly Fluorescent Carbon Dots Derived from Eucalyptus Leaves. Environments 2024, 11, 6, doi:10.3390/environments11010006.
Johny, A.; Pinto da Silva, L.; Pereira, C.M.; Esteves da Silva, J.C.G. Sustainability Assessment of Highly Fluorescent Carbon Dots Derived from Eucalyptus Leaves. Environments 2024, 11, 6, doi:10.3390/environments11010006.
Johny, A.; Pinto da Silva, L.; Pereira, C.M.; Esteves da Silva, J.C.G. Sustainability Assessment of Highly Fluorescent Carbon Dots Derived from Eucalyptus Leaves. Environments 2024, 11, 6, doi:10.3390/environments11010006.
Abstract
Biomass-derived carbon dots (CDs) are gaining much interest in recent times as it is a sustainable option with abundant availability, low cost, and tunable luminescence. Herein, we report a simple green synthesis method to produce highly fluorescent CDs from Eucalyptus globulus leaves using the one-pot hydrothermal approach. The fabricated CDs exhibit strong blue fluorescence with an excitation and emission maxima of 340 nm and 442 nm respectively. The highest quantum yield (QY) obtained was 60.7%. Due to its promising optical properties and biocompatibility, CDs can be a potential candidate for biosensing applications. Moreover, we employed a life cycle assessment (LCA) cradle-to-gate approach to study the environmental impacts of the synthesis strategy used for the fabrication of CDs. The results point out that citric acid is a main hotspot in CDs synthesis, regarding environmental impacts in most categories. This justifies the introduction of biomass, which reduces the amount of citric acid, thus leading to a more sustainable synthesis strategy for fabricating CDs.
Keywords
Carbon dots; green synthesis; biomass; eucalyptus leaves; high quantum yield; life cycle assessment
Subject
Environmental and Earth Sciences, Sustainable Science and Technology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
