报告题目：Functionalized carbon dots: from synthesis to applications

报告人：Elena Ushakova

报告时间：2024年5月24日9:10

报告地点：激光楼311

报告摘要：

Chemically synthesized carbon dots have attracted a lot of attention as an eco-friendly and cost-efficient light-emitting material. To expand the field of their applications, carbon dots can be functionalized for specific task by a control of the chemical and physical properties. Our group developed several methods for synthesis and functionalization of the surface, including the implementation of carbodiimide chemistry to bound carbon dots with chiral molecules or plasmon nanoparticles, and the use of a seed-growth method to change the chemistry of the carbon dot surface.

The functionalization of the surface allows us to control the energy level structure by changing the type of the surface groups together with increasing of the oxidation state of the surface. Based on the developed carbon dots efficient CD-LEDs with blue-green emission were fabricated.

For biomedical applications, one of the most relevant directions of functionalization is the development of multimodal nanolabels for both therapy and diagnostics. For that, we have developed two paths for introducing chirality in carbon dots: one-pot synthesis in the presence of chiral molecules and covalent bonding of chiral molecules to carbon dot surface. The latter approach is performed by carbodiimide chemistry with chiral aminoacids. The developed method works for carbon dots with optical transitions in the blue, green, and red spectral regions. The change in circular dichroism signal is due to the interaction of the chiral molecule with the optical center within the carbon dot resulting in the hybridization of lower-energy levels of chiral molecules aggregates at the surface. It was shown that chiral CDs demonstrate the enantioselective interaction with the chemical environment making them perspective for different sensing purposes in biomedicine.

报告人简介：

Elenais a Leading Researcher at Center “Information optical technologies” and Head of laboratory “Light-emissive carbon nanostructures” in ITMO University. From 2019, she is serving as a Visiting Associate Professor at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in City University of Hong Kong. Elena is the author of more than 100 publications indexed by Web of Science (H index =29). From 2018, she participated in 3 international (UK, Hong Kong, and Germany) and 4 Russian scientific projects as a researcher. Elena has received several awards, including the “L’Oreal-UNESCO “For women in science” (2021) and “Grant of the Russian President for young scientists” (2017-2018). Currently, she runs 2 projects funded by Priority 2030 Federal Academic Leadership Program and Russian Science Foundation.