Carbon dots applications for development of sustainable technologies for food safety: A comprehensive review
Sobiya Manzoor, Aamir Hussain Dar, Kshirod Kumar Dash, Vinay Kumar Pandey, Shivangi Srivastava, Iqra Bashir, Shafat Ahmad Khan
Abstract
This review describes the application of carbon dots in the development of sustainable technologies for food safety and quality. Carbon dots (CDs) are surface-functionalized and minuscule in size, with controlled fluorescence, high environmental sensitivity, and a range of remarkable photochemical properties. Green CDs are now the subject of extensive study due to their potential applications in a wide range of fields, such as nano sensing, bio imaging, and photo catalysis. Synthesizing CDs involves the top-down strategy, which includes splitting the bigger carbon molecule into nanoscale particles, and the bottom-up methodology, which involves producing CDs from small carbon units. The problems in the food supply chain are very prominent, from farm to fork that include chemical, microbiological and human hygiene. CDs have recently garnered interest because of the straightforward synthesis method, high biocompatibility, and potential for a variety of innovative applications. CDs were prepared from any carbon source, such as food, food waste, plants, chemicals, and graphene. CDs may be extracted naturally from some foods, such as honey, caramels, and sugar beet molasses. The rapid detection of dietary nutrients and toxins has sparked considerable attention, and nanomaterials-based fluorescence sensing has great promise for establishing exceptionally selective and sensitive identification procedures for food safety testing. Carbon dots have a promising future in fluorescence detection of contaminants due to their significant properties. Carbon dot sensors have capacity in the food sensing sector, since food samples include a variety of components that might create interferences, more innovative approaches to bind with CDs are necessary to develop specific sensing probes.