A facile microwave-hydrothermal approach towards highly photoluminescent carbon dots from goose feathers

Abstract

Biomass such as hair, silk and feathers is regarded as an appealing candidate for the fabrication of heteroatom-doped carbon nanomaterials. In this work, we report a facile and efficient approach to synthesise photoluminescent carbon dots (CDs) from goose feathers by microwave-hydrothermal treatment. These goose feather generated CDs possess a uniform two-dimensional morphology with a diameter of ∼21.5 nm and a height of ∼4.5 nm. Inheriting the heteroatom-rich nature of goose feathers, the resulting CDs contain a large amount of oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur atoms and have a high photoluminescence efficiency of ∼17.1%. Used as label-free photoluminescence probes, the goose feather derived CDs exhibit highly sensitive and selective detection behavior of Fe³⁺ ions with a low detection limit of 196 nM.