Grant: Idea to Innovation

Quantum dots (QD) are nanoparticles which have electronic and optical properties that can be tuned bychanging their sizes. Such QD are becoming highly popular for biomedical diagnostic applications and inphotoactive materials such as photocatalysis and display devices. However, most high-quality QDs are basedon toxic elements such as cadmium, selenium or lead. Recently, carbon quantum dots (CQDs) based only onnon-toxic carbon element, have been the object of intensive scrutiny, however, they are usually of lowquality (low quantum efficiency) and their synthesis is not amenable to a large scale deployment.We have developed a novel CQD synthesis which can be easily scaled-up and which leads to quite high quality CQDs (22% quantum efficiency in liquid state, approx 3% in solid state). Furthermore due to the presence of a polymeric polyacrylic acid layer, the CQDs can be redispersed without flocculation, and they can be easily decorated by biological ligands. This set of advantages makes our CQDs ripe for a commercialization step. In order to achieve commercialization, we need to be able to optimize the production process and to assess the formulation and stability of these materials. Furthermore, we also need to ascertain the properties of the CQDs and compare them to conventional QDs in selected applications: biomedical diagnostic, photocatalysis for architectural air purification and display technology. These applications will be tailored to answer the needs of future customers and technology licensees.