Carbon dots (CDs) are novel carbon‐based luminescent materials with wide‐ranging applications in biosensing, bioimaging, drug transportation, optical devices, and beyond. Their advantageous attributes, including biocompatibility, biodegradability, antioxidant activity, photostability, small particle size (< 10 nm), and strong light absorption and excitation across a broad range of wavelengths, making them promising candidates in the field of photodynamic therapy (PDT) as photosensitizers (PSs). Further enhancements in functionality are imperative to enhance the effectiveness of CDs in PDT applications, notwithstanding their inherent benefits. Recently, doping agents and solvents have been demonstrated to improve CDs' optical properties, solubility, cytotoxicity, and organelle targeting efficiency. These improvements result from modifications to the CDs' carbon skeleton matrices, functional groups on the surface state, and chemical structures. This review discusses the modification of CDs with heteroatom dopants, dye dopants, and solvents to improve their physicochemical and optical properties for PDT applications. The correlations between the surface chemistry, functional groups, structure of the CDs and their optical characteristics toward quantum yield, redshift feature and reactive oxygen species generation, have also been discussed. Finally, the progressive trends for the use of CDs in PDT applications are also addressed in this review.

中文翻译：

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光动力疗法中的碳点：掺杂剂和溶剂对光学和光响应特性的作用


碳点（CD）是新型碳基发光材料，在生物传感、生物成像、药物运输、光学设备等领域具有广泛的应用。它们的优势特性包括生物相容性、生物降解性、抗氧化活性、光稳定性、小粒径（< 10 nm）以及在广泛波长范围内的强光吸收和激发，使它们成为光动力治疗（PDT）领域的有希望的候选者光敏剂（PS）。尽管 CD 具有固有的优势，但为了提高 PDT 应用中 CD 的有效性，功能的进一步增强势在必行。最近，掺杂剂和溶剂已被证明可以改善碳点的光学性质、溶解度、细胞毒性和细胞器靶向效率。这些改进源于对碳点碳骨架矩阵、表面状态官能团和化学结构的修改。本综述讨论了用杂原子掺杂剂、染料掺杂剂和溶剂对碳点进行修饰，以改善其物理化学和光学性质，适合 PDT 应用。还讨论了 CD 的表面化学、官能团、结构及其光学特性与量子产率、红移特征和活性氧生成之间的相关性。最后，本次综述还讨论了在 PDT 应用中使用 CD 的进步趋势。