Kale Leaves-Derived Carbon for Dual Application: Pesticide Sensing and Photovoltaics
摘要
Carbon dots (CDs) are nanoscale carbon-based materials with unique optical, electronic, and biocompatible properties, often displaying strong fluorescence. They are widely exploited in bioimaging, sensing, photocatalysis, and energy-related applications due to their tuneable surface functionalities and ease of synthesis. In this paper, kale leaves have been used for the synthesis of naturally derived CDs by a hydrothermal technique. The synthesized CDs showed strong absorption and emission characteristics with an average particle size of 3.7 nm. The kale leaves-derived CDs were applied for the detection of cyromazine pesticide in which even a low concentration of 2.8 × 10-7 M could be assessed. Additionally, the CDs were also applied as a sensitizer is a dye-sensitized solar cell and depicted their strong photoresponsive nature with an efficiency of 0.65% and a reasonable stability of over 600 h.