N-doped carbon dots covalently functionalized with pillar[5]arenes for Fe³⁺ sensing

• Jia Gao,
• Ming-Xue Wu,
• Dihua Dai,
• Zhi Cai,
• Yue Wang,
• Wenhui Fang,
• Yan Wang and
• Ying-Wei Yang

Beilstein J. Org. Chem. 2019, 15, 1262–1267, doi:10.3762/bjoc.15.123

• Engineering, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430081, P. R. China 10.3762/bjoc.15.123 Abstract Fluorescent N-doped carbon dots (CN-dots) covalently functionalized with carboxylatopillar[5]arene (CP[5]), namely CCDs, have been prepared the first time. Compared with CN-dots without pillarene

• units, the newly constructed fluorescent CCDs could recognize Fe3+ with high selectivity. Therefore, such CCDs can potentially serve as a promising chemical sensor for Fe3+ ions. Keywords: chemical sensor; CN-dots; fluorescence; ion recognition; supramolecular chemistry; Findings Carbon dots (C-dots

• [16][17][18][19][20][21]. To our best knowledge, only few reports on pillarene-modified C-dots can be found in the literature [19], not to mention their potential applications in ion sensing. Herein, we prepare fluorescent C-dots, namely CCDs, by linking various CP[5] rings on N-doped C-dots (CN-dots