Recent Advances in Carbon Dots Based Biocatalysts for Degrading Organic Pollutants

Purpose of Review The ever-increasing environmental pollution concerns are demanding momentous efforts to clean and sustain the environment. Organic pollutants (OPs) have proven to be detrimental to numerous environmental settings, leading to changes in the food chain and the normal development of several species. Recent Findings Several traditional remediation measures have been proposed, developed, and deployed to detect and mitigate OPs to tackle water pollution. However, many conventional physiochemical or simple biological remediation processes in practice remain inefficient with notable inadequacies. The inefficiency or inadequacy of traditional remediation of persistent OPs from the various environmental matrices, including water bodies, is a serious concern that requires new measures and catalytic tools to mitigate OPs in a sustainable manner. Photocatalytic degradation of OPs is a modern and sustainable technology that can take advantage of carbon nanomaterials like carbon dots (CDs) which possess photostability and high solubility in an aqueous solution while being inexpensive and low-toxic. In this review, different technologies based on CDs and magnetic CD composites have been presented to examine their ability to photocatalytically degrade various organic contaminants. Finally, some upcoming perspectives and remaining obstacles are given on the future viewpoints of CDs.