Progress of Luminescent Carbon Dots in Biomedicine Engineering

Carbon nanodots(C-dots), as a new emerging star, have attracted great attention in recent years. Its unique properties have been developed and applied to energy conversion/storage, bioimaging, drug delivery, sensor and other biological related aspects. In this review, we introduce various synthetic methods, basic photoluminscene properties, PL mechanism and then focus on the most recent progress in targeted drug and gene delivery guided by multimode bioimaging technologies in cancer therapy. We also speculate on an outlook towards future developments for their use in bioimaging, drug delivery, sensors, diagnostics and composites.