The growing threat of antibiotic-resistant infections calls for advanced non-invasive therapeutic strategies. Herein, we construct a Schottky junction-based nanocomposite composed of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) and graphene oxide quantum dots (GOQDs), where GOQDs serve as multifunctional building blocks to synergistically enhance both photodynamic therapy (PDT) and photothermal therapy (PTT) under 460 nm LED irradiation. GOQDs not only facilitate charge separation and transfer for reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation, but also improve photothermal conversion due to their broad optical absorption and high electron mobility. Moreover, their abundant surface functional groups enhance dispersion, biocompatibility, and tissue affinity. The as-prepared AuNPs/GOQDs nanocomposites exhibit excellent dispersion stability, enhanced photothermal and ROS output, and superior biocompatibility. In vitro antibacterial assays demonstrate > 97% bacterial eradication efficiency against both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. More importantly, in a murine wound infection model, the nanocomposite enables ~99% wound healing within 9 days, significantly outperforming control treatments. Histological analysis further confirms accelerated tissue regeneration with reduced inflammation. This study highlights the critical function of GOQDs in amplifying light-triggered antibacterial activity and accelerating wound healing, offering a promising strategy for clinical phototherapy against multidrug-resistant pathogens.

Immunotherapy has become a key focus in cancer treatment, and cancer nanovaccines have made significant progress as a representative approach in this field. However, some issues such as low immunogenicity, inefficient antigen delivery, and poor immune responses have limited the advancement of immunotherapy. To address these limitations, this study developed a pH-responsive nanovaccine (Lyc-OVA) based on Lycium barbarum-derived carbon dots (Lyc-CDs) synthesized via a green hydrothermal method. Owing to retained Lycium barbarum polysaccharides (LBP, 18.43% total sugar content), Lyc-CDs demonstrated superior loading efficiency (48.40%) and pH-responsive release (80% OVA released within 24 h at pH 5.4) of OVA. Molecular docking simulations identified hydrogen bonding and π-cation interactions between LBP monosaccharides (rhamnose/galactose) and OVA. Lyc-OVA promoted dendritic cell maturation (32.87% CD80⁺CD86⁺ cells, comparable to LPS) and cytokine secretion (TNF-α: 13.10 pg mL⁻¹; IFN-γ: 17.78 pg mL⁻¹; IL-6: 3.74 pg mL⁻¹). In a bilateral B16-OVA melanoma model, Lyc-OVA suppressed primary/distal tumor growth (80.36%/82.16% inhibition rates) by activating CD4⁺CD8⁺T cells, reducing immunosuppressive Treg/MDSC populations, and reshaping the tumor immune microenvironment. This work highlights the multifunctional role of natural polysaccharides in nanovaccine and provides an effective strategy for tumor immunotherapy.

Circularly polarized luminescence (CPL) has significant application value in fields such as quantum computing, three-dimensional (3D) display, and bioimaging. However, its practical application faces challenges including low dissymmetry factor (g), insufficient quantum yield, poor directionality, and broad emission spectrum. To address these issues, circularly polarized laser technology can significantly enhance CPL performance through stimulated emission amplification and resonant cavity mode selection, achieving circularly polarized light output with high g (close to the theoretical limit of 2), high brightness, narrow linewidth, and strong directionality. Currently, although materials like organic microcrystals and perovskites can realize circularly polarized laser with high g, they still have problems such as complex preparation and poor biocompatibility. In contrast, carbon dots (CDs) have emerged as a highly promising new type of circularly polarized gain medium due to their advantages of simple preparation, low cost, low toxicity, easy modification, and good biocompatibility. This paper systematically reviews the material systems, device types, and application progress of circularly polarized laser, focusing on the advantages of CDs as gain media and their potential in fields such as 3D display, optical communication, information encryption, and biosensing. It also prospects the future development directions and challenges of CDs-based circularly polarized lasers, providing a reference for promoting the practical application process of high-performance circularly polarized laser devices.

In response to the growing demand for renewable energy, rechargeable batteries, such as lithium-ion batteries, are finding increasingly widespread applications in energy storage and daily life. Currently, the pursuit of batteries with high specific energy and enhanced safety is constrained by limitations in the electrolyte bulk and interfacial reactions. Consequently, modulating the electrolyte and its interphases is key to overcoming current bottlenecks and developing next-generation batteries. As an emerging nanomaterial, the rich surface functional groups and dopable sites of carbon dots (CDs) enable them to simultaneously regulate bulk ion dynamics and interface stability through surface chemistry design, showcasing immense potential in addressing the critical challenges in electrolytes. This review systematically summarizes the cutting-edge applications of CDs in electrolytes for lithium-ion, sodium-ion, and zinc-ion batteries. It introduces the structural characteristics, classification, and synthesis methods of CDs, and outlines their multifaceted roles as additives in liquid electrolytes, fillers in solid-state electrolytes, and interfacial regulators for solid composite electrolytes. A special focus is placed on elucidating the mechanisms of CDs in regulating ion deposition, constructing functionalized interfacial layers, and optimizing the electrolyte microenvironment. Finally, this review discusses the challenges and future outlook for CDs in electrolyte engineering, aiming to provide new perspectives and theoretical support for the design of battery systems with high specific energy and high safety.

Phosphorescent inks based on carbon nanodots (CNDs) offer an environmentally friendly and low-cost alternative for persistent visibility and time-delayed information retrieval. However, current matrix-dependent phosphorescent CNDs suffer from poor processability and limited substrate compatibility, hindering their application in scalable, high-resolution invisible printing. Here, we report water-soluble phosphorescent CND inks that enable high-resolution, environmentally stable, and invisible printing. The triplet excitons in CNDs are stabilized by spatial confinement during printing, resulting in bright and long-lived phosphorescence. The phosphorescent CND inks enable invisible yet high-fidelity printing of complex textual patterns with micrometer resolution (2480 × 3508 dpi, ~100 μm feature size), supporting font sizes down to 5 pt and line widths as thin as 0.05 pt across five types of paper substrates. The printed patterns exhibit over 98.7% accuracy across approximately 8.7 million pixels, demonstrating excellent fidelity. Based on these excellent invisible printing properties, a 200-page wordless book using phosphorescent CND inks was demonstrated. This work presents a scalable, low-cost, and high-resolution platform for phosphorescent ink printing, marking a significant advance in invisible printing technology.

Carbon dots (CDs) have been widely applied in fluorescence imaging both in vitro and in vivo. However, key challenges remain to be addressed, including the poor specificity of CDs as biological markers and their relatively low fluorescence quantum yield (QY) in the red emission region. In this study, we synthesized red fluorescent carbon dots (designated as EA-CDs, λ_ex/λ_em = 400 nm/660 nm) using a natural plant-derived precursor ethanol extract from Epipremnum aureum leaves via a one-pot solvothermal method. The EA-CDs exhibit a small particle size (average diameter: 3.9 nm), high fluorescence QY (15.4% in ethanol at λ_em = 660 nm), low toxicity (both in vitro and in vivo), and favorable lipophilicity (oil-water partition coefficient LogP > 0), making them suitable for biological fluorescence imaging and labeling applications. Experimental results indicate that these red-emitting CDs can not only effectively label plant cell membranes, but also serve as an intestinal fluorescence imaging probe in zebrafish models. This suggests their potential as a universal red-emissive bio-membrane dye with high QY. Furthermore, this work pioneers a novel application approach for ornamental plants like Epipremnum aureum.

Carbon dots (CDs), as a class of highly promising multifunctional carbon nanomaterials, have emerged as a hot research topic in photocatalysis due to their strong visible-light absorption, favorable optical properties, and tunable bandgap structures. In recent years, extensive efforts have been devoted to enhancing the catalytic performance by combining CDs with other catalysts to form complexes. Beyond that, CDs also present a decent catalytic performance in various fields. However, summaries focusing on photocatalytic performance and mechanisms of CDs as a single-component photocatalyst remain scarce. A thorough understanding of structural characteristics and modulation strategies of the CDs is crucial for further advancing their photocatalytic applications. This review systematically summarizes the intrinsic structural features of CDs, performance enhancement strategies, including elemental doping and surface functionalization, and their applications as single-component catalysts in diverse photocatalytic reactions.

Integrating stimuli-responsive luminescence with dynamic emission properties offers a powerful strategy to enhance information encryption through multi-level authentication systems. By rationally tuning the singlet-triplet energy gap (ΔE_ST) of a material, simultaneous activation of phosphorescence (Phos) and delayed fluorescence (DF) can be achieved, enabling programmable dynamic afterglow behavior. In this work, we report the first carbon dot (CD)-based thermoresponsive dynamic afterglow material, synthesized via in situ covalent immobilization of CDs within a cyanuric acid matrix. The resulting system demonstrates a thermally driven green-to-blue afterglow transition across a wide temperature range (273.15–423.15 K), exhibiting dual-mode thermochromic afterglow (TCA) and time-resolved afterglow (TRA) characteristics. Notably, a blue-to-green afterglow transition occurs above the threshold temperature of 348.15 K, where TRA dominates due to temperature-dependent exciton redistribution. This synergistic TCA-TRA interplay endows the material with unprecedented dynamic afterglow modulation capabilities. Structural and photophysical analyses confirm that covalent fixation reduces the ΔE_ST of CDs from 0.46 to 0.28 eV, as designed. This ΔE_ST engineering enables thermal control over the Phos/DF equilibrium, directly governing the observed dynamic emission. Finally, the potential applications of the prepared material in thermal monitoring and high-security information protection are also demonstrated.

Carbonized polymer dots (CPDs) have emerged as promising room temperature phosphorescent (RTP) materials owing to their tunable luminescence and facile synthesis. However, current strategies relying on hydrogen/covalent bond for luminescence enhancement suffer from limited phosphorescence intensity, and color diversity (primarily green). This work proposes constructing ionic-bond crosslinked network as a novel design strategy to address these limitations. Owing to the high strength, non-directionality and non-saturation of ionic bond, crosslinked networks are constructed to immobilize chromophores and suppress non-radiative transitions. By incorporating lithium ions into poly(acrylic acid)-based CPDs, the photoluminescence quantum yield is dramatically enhanced from 1.1% to 48.4%, with a 40-fold increase in phosphorescence intensity. Further introduction of zinc ions enables tunable RTP emission from green to yellow via transition metal doping. This strategy achieves effective regulation of RTP intensity and wavelength in CPDs, providing a versatile platform for designing advanced organic phosphorescent materials with tailored RTP properties.

Photodynamic therapy (PDT), as a Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved therapeutic modality, has witnessed substantial advancements in the field of oncology. However, the conventional PDT may suffer poor prognosis due to the transient nature of (Reactive Oxygen Species) ROS, excessive phototoxicity, and inducing traditional apoptosis. In this study, a nanoengineered carbon dots (NCDs) was constructed through electrostatic interaction between a positive-charged carbon dots photosensitizers (PCDs) and new indocyanine green (IR820). The introduction of IR820 at variable ratios could change the surface charge and amphiphilic characteristics of NCDs, thereby modulating the membrane-anchoring capability of NCDs. Besides, the J-aggregation of IR820 led to a redshift of fluorescence from NIR-Ⅰ to NIR-Ⅱ region, thereby achieving NIR-Ⅱ imaging. Furthermore, the photoactivity of PCDs was quenched by IR820, with subsequent restoration of PDT occurring contingent on the photobleaching of IR820 via 750 nm laser irradiation. Finally, both in vitro and in vivo studies had demonstrated that under a cascaded laser irradiation, the membrane-targeted NCDs could effectively induce cell pyroptosis, thereby eradicating tumors with minimal side effects while simultaneously activating immune responses to inhibit tumor lung metastasis. This study developed a multifunctional nanoengieering carbon dots and offered novel perspectives for tumor photodynamic-immunotherapy with enhanced controllability, improved efficacy and high security.

Aqueous zinc-ion batteries (AZIBs) have gained considerable attention as next-generation energy storage devices due to their inherent safety, environmental friendliness, and cost-effectiveness. However, their widespread application is severely hampered by uncontrolled zinc dendrite growth and detrimental side reactions (e.g., hydrogen evolution, corrosion, and passivation), which lead to reduced Coulombic efficiency and shortened cycle life. Current strategies to improve zinc anode stability mainly focus on artificial interface coatings, electrode structure design, and electrolyte optimization. Among these approaches, electrolyte additive engineering is considered the most promising for practical applications due to its simplicity, low cost, and excellent scalability. Nevertheless, conventional additives (including metal ions, polymers, and surfactants) typically address only single issues (either dendrite suppression or side reaction mitigation), failing to achieve synergistic effects. In this work, we developed sulfur-doped carbon dots (S-CDs) as a novel bifunctional electrolyte additive to significantly enhance AZIB performance. The carbon dot additive was synthesized via a facile calcination method, followed by systematic characterization of its structure and properties using methods such as Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and density functional theory (DFT) calculations. Comprehensive electrochemical evaluations were conducted to investigate the influence of S-CDs on zinc deposition behavior and overall battery performance. Experimental results demonstrate the successful synthesis of sulfur-doped carbon dots with abundant surface functional groups. During battery operation, the strong binding affinity between S-CDs and Zn²⁺ effectively reconstructs the Zn²⁺ solvation shell, reducing water molecule content and thereby minimizing electrode corrosion and side reactions caused by interfacial active water molecules. Moreover, the S-CDs induce the formation of stable (002) crystallographic planes that continuously renew during plating/stripping cycles, with particularly pronounced effects under high current densities, significantly enhancing the structural stability of the electrode. The synergistic effect of these dual functions leads to remarkable improvement in zinc electrode performance and ultimately endows the battery with ultra-long cycling life. Benefiting from the positive effects of the carbon dot additive, the symmetric cell achieves exceptional stability for nearly 2000 h at a high current density of 10 mA∙cm⁻², far outperforming conventional electrolyte systems. Furthermore, both Zn||NH₄V₄O₁₀ and Zn||MnO₂ full cells exhibit superior electrochemical performance and significantly enhanced cycling stability, confirming the excellent compatibility of the carbon dot additive with various cathode materials. This study provides novel insights and fundamental theoretical guidance for developing high-performance AZIBs, representing a significant advancement in sustainable energy storage technologies.

Carbon dots (CDs) have emerged as promising photothermal agents for near-infrared (NIR)-mediated tumor therapy due to their excellent biocompatibility and tunable optical properties. However, it is still unclear how to precisely control their assembly behavior to enhance NIR absorption and photothermal conversion efficiency. In this work, we present a hyper-assembled electron donor/acceptor CDs complex (S-d/a-CDs), constructed by integrating electron-donating CDs (d-CDs) with electron-withdrawing CDs (a-CDs). This configuration significantly enhances the NIR absorption capacity of S-d/a-CDs. Under 740 nm laser irradiation, S-d/a-CDs achieve a remarkable photothermal conversion efficiency (PTCE) of 65.8%. S-d/a-CDs exhibit negligible cytotoxicity and effective tumor accumulation capacity through intravenous administration, enabling complete tumor elimination after NIR laser irradiation. To our knowledge, this study is the first to exploit synergistic assembles of two types of CDs for photo-physical property engineering, establishing a groundbreaking paradigm for the development of advanced NIR-triggered photothermal materials.