Recent Progress and Future Perspectives of Carbon Dots in the Detection, Degradation, and Enhancement of Drugs

Abstract

for maximum solar energy conversion. Due to the broad light absorbance, photo luminescence (PL) properties, and elec tron transfer capability, CDs alone and as composites with other species can act as excellent candidates for the degradation of organic pollutants. CDs have a healthy competition between traditional semicon ductors in several aspects such as reduced cost, easy functionalization, biocompat ibility, highly tunable PL, inertness, and resistance to photobleaching, in which CDs are almost in the winning stage. [8,9] Drugs play an inevitable role in main taining human health and wellbeing. The harsh reality is that the high chem ical stability and low biodegradability of pharmaceuticals, along with an increase in consumption patterns, cause a signifi cant threat to aquatic life and the whole food chain. The active ingredients, pre servatives, radioactive components, and solvents used in the drug can act on unin tended targets. This hazardous material released to the environ ment due to various human activities are accumulative and can cause serious health issues to all living beings. [10,11] The sudden increase in the global emissions of antibiotics is attributed to their increasing overuse and misuse, along with the ineffective ness of existing degradation methods. It is a great relief that the CDs have the potential of detecting and degrading these phar maceuticals without hurting the green planet. It is essential to safeguard nature without causing everlasting scars and wounds.The detection of pharmaceuticals in drinking water necessi tates developing environmentfriendly methods and materials for their safe discharge. There are several reports of the syn thesis of CDs for the degradation and sensing of drugs. Further more, CDs have been used for the enhancement of the activity of antibiotics. Despite the growing focus on several other appli cations on CDs, there is no review giving special attention to the reported CDdrug relations in the literature. In this review, we have made a small step toward summarizing the interac tion between CDs and drugs, concentrating mainly on applica tions, including detection, degradation, and enhancement of drugs. The review is primarily divided into three sections after a brief note on CDs' history, synthesis approaches, and modifi cation methods. First section deals with the potential applica tion of CDs in detecting or sensing drugs. It is followed by the development of CD/photocatalyst composite for the photodeg radation of pharmaceutical products in the second section. The third section of the review is dedicated to the enhanced activity attained when CDs are conjugated with drugs.Carbon dots (CDs) are new types of nanoparticles with sizes less than 10 nm in diameter. CDs with their unique properties can detect, degrade, and surprisingly enhance drugs. This review focuses on three major aspects of CDdrug interactions: detection, degradation, and enhancement of drugs using CDs. The review begins with a brief account of the significant development milestones, the sy...

Recent Advances in Synthesis, Modification, Characterization, and Applications of Carbon Dots

“…It was reported that the existence of CDs in most cases could not be confirmed by XRD spectra, due to the low crystallinity and high dispersion of CDs [ 8 ]. In the future, the use of appropriate characterization methods is quite important for the research of CDs-based materials.…”

“…Han et al [ 7 ] summarized the advances in CDs-based ratiometric fluorescent sensors for food safety applications and detection mechanisms. Korah et al [ 8 ] reviewed three aspects of CD-drug interactions, including drug detection, photocatalytic degradation by CDs-based composites, and enhancement of drugs by using CDs. Mohammadi [ 9 ] reported the recent progress in using carbon-based QDs as a biosensing and fluorescence imaging platform for the early stage diagnosis of cancers.…”

Synergies in antimicrobial treatment by a levofloxacin-loaded halloysite and gold nanoparticles with a conjugation to a cell-penetrating peptide

“…The remaining clear solutions were diluted with related buffer media (1 to 100 mL) and studied on a UV-vis spectrophotometer at a wavelength of 295 nm. 21,62,63 2.4. Cellular experiments 2.4.1.…”