Carbon Nanodots for Cell Imaging

As novel fluorescent materials, carbon nanodots (CNDs) have gained tremendous attention due to their exceptional physicochemical properties. Compared to other fluorescent materials, CNDs have tunable photoluminescence properties, high photostability, good water-dispersity, low toxicity, and excellent biocompatibility. Thus, they have broad applications in biomedical fields, such as biosensing, bioimaging, and drug delivery. In this chapter, we first briefly review the synthetic methods of CNDs, and then summarize the recent progress of CNDs in cell imaging, including mammalian cell imaging, microbial cell imaging, and plant cell imaging.