Green synthesis of carbon dots from prawn shells for highly selective and sensitive detection of copper ions

• Carbon dots derived from prawn shells were successfully synthesized.
• A simple, sensitive, selective and label free sensing of Cu2+ was developed.
• The detection limit of developed method achieved 5 nM.
• The sensor system was demonstrated to detect Cu2+ in environmental water sample.

A facile, economical and effective green method was developed for synthesis of fluorescent carbon dots (C-dots) from prawn shells. The results showed that these C-dots (with an average diameter of 4 nm) possess many excellent features such as to eliminate blue fluorescence under UV light (λ = 365 nm), with high monodispersity, good stability, excellent water solubility and high quantum yield (9%). We further explored these C-dots as effective sensing probes for Cu2+ detection and found that they exhibit excellent selectivity and sensitivity toward Cu2+ with a low detection limit of 5 nM. We further demonstrated this novel sensing platform on Cu2+ ions analysis from seawater samples. This method is extremely rapid, low cost, ecofriendly, highly selective and sensitive for Cu2+ ions sensing from various sources of environment such as drinking water, river water and sea water.

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