Investigation of the optical properties of aminated carbon dots based on citric acid and ethylenediamine

The most important parameter determining the efficiency of carbon dots as light absorbers in photocatalytic systems is the strength of their binding to the catalyst. It is rather difficult to estimate the contribution of this parameter of carbon dots to the overall efficiency of the photocatalytic system, since the post-synthetic modification of the surface of carbon dots is accompanied by a significant change in their optical and structural properties. In this work, we performed post-synthetic modification of the surface of carbon dots based on citric acid by amination with ethylenediamine molecules by activating the carboxyl groups of carbon dots with 1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl)carbodiimide and N-hydroxysuccinimide molecules. The use of this amination approach made it possible to change the charge of carbon dots without changing their main optical and structural properties, which can be further used to assess the contribution of the strength of their binding with Dubois-type molecular catalysts to the overall efficiency of the photocatalytic system.