Carbon-dot growth on nanoconvex carbon wires for outstanding optical properties.

Abstract

The appearance of carbon spheres, chemical nanostructures, and physical spheres on the surface of carbon wires demonstrates the ability to overcome the optical weaknesses of carbon wires. Carbon dots (CDs) present far superior advantages over these structures in terms of excellent optical properties, and the transfer of these advantages from CDs to carbon wires would improve the specificity of the optical properties of carbon wires, but has been challenging to date. Here, a novel strategy for the fabrication of CDs on nanoconvex carbon wires is developed by pre-treating a Si substrate with oxidation and nitrogen, depositing nanoconvex PAN wires on the pre-treated Si substrate with electro-hydrodynamic jetting, and subsequently implementing stabilization and carbonization. We find that this strategy exhibits the unexpected ability to form CDs on nanoconvex carbon wires and transform these CDs from being dispersed to being connected together by control over both their quantity and dispersion. Our results demonstrate the presence of two types of CDs - wire-broken CDs and continuous carbon-wire-surfaced CDs. The ability of the carbon wires based on these new CDs to show outstanding optical signals in Raman and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy spectra, creates an opportunity for research into novel physics and optical devices that have not previously been possible.