FRET Study Between Carbon Quantum Dots and Malachite Green by Steady-State and Time-Resolved Fluorescence Spectroscopy

Abstract

Background: Understanding the interaction between different organic dyes and carbon quantum dots helps us to understand several photo physical processes like electron transfer, energy transfer, molecular sensing, drug delivery and dye degradation processes etc. Objective: The primary objective of this study is to whether the carbon quantum dots can act as an electron donor and can participate in the different photo physical processes. Methods: In this work, Carbon Quantum Dots (CQDLs) are synthesized in most economical and simple carbonization method where petals of Nelumbo nucifera L. are used as a carbon precursor. The synthesized CQDLs were characterized by using experimental techniques like UV−Vis absorption, FT-IR, Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), steadystate and time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy. Results: The spectral analysis shows that the so synthesized CQDLs are spherical in shape and its diameter is around 4.2 nm. It shows the fluorescence emission maximum at 495 nm with a quantum yield of 4%. In this work the interaction between Carbon Quantum Dots (CQDLs) and an organic dye Malachite Green (MG) is studied using fluorescence spectroscopic technique under ambient pH condition (At pH 7). The quenching mechanism of CQDLs with MG was investigated using Stern-Volmer equation and time-resolved fluorescence lifetime studies. The results show that the dominant process of fluorescence quenching is attributed to Forster Resonance Energy Transfer (FRET) having a donor acceptor distance of 53 Å where CQDLs act as a donor and MG acts as an acceptor. Conclusion: This work has a consequence that CQDLs can be used as a donor species for different photo physical processes such as photovoltaic cell, dye sensitized solar cell, and also for antioxidant activity study.