Fluorescent carbon dots based on food wastes: Applications in food safety detection

Food safety has become a major global concern. In order to ensure food safety and human health, it is urgent to develop methods to detect harmful substances in foods. Nanomaterials have accelerated the development of food safety detection methods. Among them, green fluorescent carbon dots (CDs) have been widely used in the field of food safety detection due to their good biocompatibility, wide range of raw material sources, low cost, simple methods, and strong photostability. Especially the CDs prepared from food wastes residue not only have good detection performance, but also achieve wastes utilization. This manuscript reviews the advancements in CDs generated from food wastes in the past 5 years. The application of carbon dots in food safety is focused on four aspects: detection of food additives, heavy metal ions, foodborne pathogens, and antibiotics. What's more, the challenges and future direction of research on the preparation of CDs and their applications in food safety testing are also discussed.