One-step synthesis of acriflavine-based carbon dots for adenine detection and a theoretical study on the detection mechanism

Adenine detection is important in biomedicine. Here, we report acriflavine-based carbon dots prepared via a one-step synthesis that can detect adenine in aqueous solution via fluorescence. Titration experiments show that the fluorescence intensity of carbon dots increases by up to 35% as the concentration of adenine increases. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy images show that carbon dots have a recognizable lattice structure. Based on this, we built a theoretical model using the DFT method to explain the mechanism by which adenine enhances fluorescence on the carbon dots.