A review on graphene quantum dots, an emerging luminescent carbon nanolights: Healthcare and Environmental applications

As emerging luminescent carbon nanolights, graphene quantum dots (GQDs) have gained wide attention due to their outstanding electrical, mechanical, and other physicochemical properties even though their intricate synthetic procedures curb their use in far-reaching applications. The unique properties of GQDs such as low cytotoxic reactivity, exceptional biocompatibility, unresponsiveness to chemicals, etc. are because of their small size, tunable surface edges, quantum confinement, and edge effects. Their properties are amenable to tuning by surface/edge functionalization or doping to augment the optoelectronic and physicochemical properties of GQDs. Worthy of mention is the fact that surface-functionalized GQDs, encompassing both organic fluorophore and heteroatom constituents, are lately being examined as prospective plinths for healthcare, environmental and energy sectors, and myriad other industrial applications. This review presents the recent progress with free and edge-terminated GQDs that can be used in healthcare and environmental applications such as tumor targeting, cell imaging, and labeling, detection of biologically important metal ions and molecules, and efficient and effective detection of various pollutants in real water samples wherein these zero-dimensional luminescent nanolights can selectively and sensitively monitor particular analytes of interest through different methodologies.