Sustainable carbon-dots: recent advances in green carbon dots for sensing and bioimaging

The past decade has witnessed the emergence of carbon dots (c-dots), outshining other members of the carbon family because of their outstanding properties in fluorescence, cytocompatibility, photostability, electronic, mechanical and other chemical properties. This has resulted in an increasing number of applications in bioimaging, sensing, photovoltaic and medicine. Nature offers a wealth of exciting precursors that motivate constant persuasion of benign synthetic routes. Consequently, the past 5 years has seen a tremendous rise in green synthetic approaches of c-dots. This study reviews the journey of green c-dots by means of green sources of synthesis and their applications, with the major focus on various sensors and bioimaging probes. This review article highlights recent progress in use of green precursors for synthesis of carbon-dots and their applications in fluorescence-based sensing and bioimaging.