Simple fabrication of carbon quantum dots and activated carbon from waste wolfberry stems for detection and adsorption of copper ion

Removal of heavy metal pollution is an endless topic, because heavy metals can cause irreversible damage to the human body and environment. It is urgent to develop novel materials for detection and adsorption of heavy metal ions. In this paper, waste wolfberry straw was utilized as a carbon source, and two simple methods were developed to successfully prepare activated carbon (AC) and carbon quantum dots (CQDs). The fabrication conditions were optimized by adjusting the mass ratio of precursor to activator, type of activator and activation times. When sodium hydroxide (NaOH) was selected as an activator (6 : 1, mass ratio of NaOH to AC-precursor), and the activation was performed at 600 °C for 1 h, the highest specific surface area of the obtained AC-NaOH-3 reached 3016 m2 g−1. The adsorption capacity for copper ions (Cu2+) reached 68.06 mg g−1. The preparation conditions for CQDs were also optimized by adjusting the concentration of wolfberry stem, reaction time and temperature. When the wolfberry stem concentration was 7.5 g L−1, and the activation was performed at 200 °C for 24 h, the obtained CQDs exhibited strong fluorescence emission in the blank and 12 kinds of metal ion solutions, respectively, however, the fluorescence intensity was remarkably decreased after adding Cu2+. In the range of 10–80 nM, the linear correlation coefficient between the concentration of Cu2+ and fluorescence intensity of CQDs was 0.992, and the limit of detection was 2.83 nmol L−1. Thus, these two kinds of materials were prepared from wolfberry stem, which opened up a new way for the application in adsorption and detection of copper ions.