| In the recent decade, nanotechnology is considerably ascribed as an innovative field of science, owing to the unique chemo-physical and biomedical properties of nanomaterials. Investigative structures using nanotechnology have found superior applicability in diverse purposes, such as, in agricultural and food industries, whereas, certain nano-objects showed to enhance the quality and safety of various food products; in medical and biological purposes; cosmetics industry; and many other purposes. Carbon-based/optically active nanostructures, ascribed as carbon dots (CDs or C-dots), carbon quantum dots (CQDs), graphene quantum dots (GQDs), or polymer quantum dots (PQDs or PDs) were investigated and extensively attracted the attention in different researching areas, such as photocatalysis, bioimaging, medical diagnosis, electro- and bio-sensing. CQDs are reported to be advantageous with tunable luminescent characters, simple synthesis pathway, low-cost of fabrication, bio-consonance or biocompatibility, non-toxicity, ecofriendly, water solubility excellent and chemical stabilization. Obeying the green chemistry aspects, the current approach demonstrates an overview about a background on CQDs discovery, their chemical composition, photoluminescence and cytotoxicity. The current approach also considered with highlighting the affinity of different types of polysaccharides for the successive nucleation of CQDs as cost effective/ecofriendly/green synthetic pathway. A systematic overview is represented about CQDs applicability in biomedicine, environmental purposes, textiles industrialization and soil fertilization. |
