Green Synthesis of Fluorescent Carbon Dots and AI-Driven New Paradigms: A Comprehensive Review

Carbon dots (CDs) have been widely employed in diverse fields by virtue of their excellent water solubility, low toxicity, high fluorescence stability, and favorable biocompatibility. Nevertheless, traditional preparation methods for CDs generally suffer from drawbacks that run counter to the concept of green chemistry. This review comprehensively summarizes the green synthesis technologies, machine learning (ML)-assisted synthesis strategies, and diversified application fields of fluorescent CDs. Specifically, it discusses the characteristics of synthetic organic molecular/polymeric materials and natural sources (e.g., plants and fruit peels, etc.) and elaborates on the top-down and bottom-up green synthesis methods, analyzing their advantages. It also focuses on ML’s core role in precisely regulating CD emission wavelengths, enhancing and predicting fluorescence quantum yields to optimize synthesis processes. Additionally, this review highlights the representative biological applications of CDs, including biosensing and biomedicine (e.g., bioimaging, drug delivery, and photodynamic therapy), while briefly covering their applications in other fields. Finally, the review points out current challenges in green synthesis, ML-assisted applications and industrial translation, and puts forward future research directions, aiming to promote the greenization, intellectualization and large-scale development of CDs.