From the traditional way of pyrolysis to tunable photoluminescent water soluble carbon nano-onions for cell imaging and selective sensing of glucose

摘要: The traditional pyrolysis of vegetable ghee leads to the fabrication graphitic photoluminescent, water soluble carbon nano-onions (wsCNO) with tunable photoluminescence without using any metal catalyst. Simple oxidative treatment by nitric acid fabricated a high density “self-passivated” version. As-synthesized wsCNO possessed behavior from visible-to-near infrared region. Further small sized separated bulk as-synthesized via gel filtration achieved highly fluorescent colored fraction, used for cell imaging (Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas putida) selective, immediate sensing glucose molecules based upon simple fluorescence “turn-off”/“turn-on” technique.