Converting waste Chrysanthemi Flos residues into high-value fluorescent carbon dots for rapid and selective detection of mercury (II) ions in aqueous environments

作者：Boyang Zhu, Kailun Zhang, Shibing Wei, Li Song, Daiyin Peng, Jiusheng Nie, Jin‐Ao Duan, Deling Wu, Xiangwei Chang · 发表于：Industrial Crops and Products · 年份：2025 · DOI：10.1016/j.indcrop.2025.120914 · 被引用次数：7 · 研究领域：Carbon and Quantum Dots Applications、Nanocluster Synthesis and Applications、Mercury impact and mitigation studies

Chrysanthemi Flos (CF) is widely used as an edible and medicinal crop, resulting in large amounts of residue production annually. The discarded CF residues (CFR) cause environmental pollution and wastage of resources. Converting CFR into functional carbon dots (CDs) is an important strategy to achieve its “waste-to-wealth” goal. Here, a CFR-derived CDs (CFR-CDs) based fluorescent sensor was successfully developed for the rapid and selective detection of mercury (Ⅱ) ions in aqueous environments, and its sensing mechanism for detecting Hg 2+ was elucidated. First, the CFR was used as a precursor to extract fluorescent CDs via a simple and green hydrothermal method. The prepared CFR-CDs possessed a typical graphite-like structure with an average size of 2.23 nm, and exhibited good hydrophilicity, excellent photostability, and excitation-dependence fluorescence behavior, while emitting blue fluorescence. Interestingly, the CFR-CDs were highly selective towards Hg 2+ , and their fluorescence was rapidly quenched by Hg 2+ (within 1 min). The prepared CFR-CDs were then used as a fluorescent sensor for efficient detection of Hg 2+ in the range of 0.3–10 μmol/L with a low limit of detection (LOD) of 0.129 μmol/L. The recovery of the Hg 2+ in actual water environments ranged between 98.60 % and 104.00 % with a relative standard deviation < 5.0 %, demonstrating the reliability of the developed sensor. Additionally, the detection mechanism was revealed to be the synergistic action of the ...