Carbon Nano-dots in Electrochemical Sensors and Biosensors: A review

Collected from the most recent published literature, this review work presents the latest advances of designing electrochemical sensors by using carbon nano dots (CNDs), involving carbon dots (CDs), and graphene quantum dots (GQDs), as a new class of photo-luminescent nanomaterials, which can be employed in vast applications such as biomedicine, bio-sensing, optical sensing, catalysis, solar cell, imaging, and electrochemical sensing. Recently, the application of CDs and GQDs in electrochemical sensing has increased significantly because of their unique features such as quantum size, excellent biocompatibility, enzyme-like activity, high active area and abundant hydrophilic groups, such as hydroxyl, carboxyl or amine on them. The application of CDs and GQDs for electrochemical sensing of hydrogen peroxide, glucose and other organic molecules as well as metal ions is presented. The utilization of CDs and GQDs for immunosensing and aptasensing is also reported.