Carbon dots (CDs) are novel zero-dimensional carbonaceous nanomaterial, and they are featured with an attractive combination of physical, chemical, and biomedical properties including wide absorption spectrum, tunable fluorescence, excellent water solubility, outstanding photostability, and biocompatibility, which leads to their diverse applications as optically functional materials in various fields, e.g., fluorescence sensing, bioimaging, and drug delivery. Recently, it was revealed that CDs could be used as an effective photosensitizer to generate reactive oxygen species under light excitation, and/or a photothermal agent to convert light energy into heat, which enable them to be applied in photodynamic therapy or photothermal therapy for cancer treatment. In this review, we summarize the latest progress of research on CDs in phototherapy, including their use as nanocarriers for organic phototherapy agents, and highlight the strategies which are adopted to improve the therapeutic efficacy of CDs-based phototheranostics. Furthermore, we also discuss the challenges and prospects of the CDs-based phototheranostics towards clinical applications. We hope this review will provide critical insights to inspire new exciting discoveries on CDs from both fundamental and practical views so as to prompt their advances in the phototherapy.

碳点（CD）是新颖的零维碳质纳米材料，具有物理，化学和生物医学特性的诱人组合，包括宽吸收光谱，可调荧光，出色的水溶性，出色的光稳定性和生物相容性，因此它们在光学感应，生物成像和药物输送等领域中作为光学功能材料的广泛应用。最近发现，CD可以用作有效的光敏剂，在光激发下产生活性氧，和/或将光能转化为热的光热剂，使其能够用于癌症的光动力疗法或光热疗法。治疗。在这篇评论中，我们总结了光疗中CD的最新研究进展，包括将其用作有机光疗剂的纳米载体，并重点介绍了用于提高基于CD的光热疗治疗效果的策略。此外，我们还讨论了基于CD的光热学在临床应用中的挑战和前景。我们希望这篇评论将提供重要的见解，从基本和实际的角度激发CD上令人兴奋的新发现，从而促进CD在光疗领域的进步。