Fluorescent Sensing of Ferric Ions Based on Emissive Carbon Dots

Ferric ion plays an important role in various physiological processes and is crucial to human health. Fluorescent sensing of ferric ions based on carbon dots is attracting intensive interests owing to the prominent merits of carbon dots such as easy preparation, high photostability, low toxicity, and high solubility in water. In this paper, one kind of nitrogen-doped carbon dots (CDs-AE) was reported, which exhibited strong fluorescence with emission peaked at 480 nm. Notably, the presence of ferric ions can efficiently quench the photoluminescence of CDs-AE, and the quenching efficiency was as high as 94%. Finally, the quenching mechanism behind was explored and the application of CDs-AE in ferric ion detection in real sample was studied.