Abstract
[Display omitted]
•Fluorescent textile cotton sensor coated with N-doped carbon dots was developed.•One-pot hydrothermal carbonization was employed to prepare NCDs from rice straw.•NCDs-coated cotton fabric displayed acetone-dependent blue emission quenching.•Blue fluorescence showed an efficient reversible detection with LOD of 10–200 ppb.•Gaseous acetone can be monitored by quenching of cotton fabric fluorescence.
Chronic breath can be cited as a warning indication of diabetes-related health problems. Diabetic ketoacidosis can cause a person's breath to smell strongly like acetone, which indicates a high quantity of ketones in blood. So, it has been significant to develop a simple fluorescent textile mask to detect acetone vapor in breath of diabetic patients. On the other hand, rice straw has long been a well-known worldwide solid pollutant. As a result, developing a straightforward process to transform rice straw into a useful product is critical. Herein, a simple and pollution-free approach was devised to reprocess rice straw toward the preparation and immobilization of luminous nitrogen-doped carbon dots (NCDs) onto textile cotton mask for detection of acetone. One-pot hydrothermal carbonization of cellulose diacetate with NH4OH as a passivating agent was used to prepare NCDs. The impregnation method was used to place a thin coating of luminous cellulose carbon dots onto cotton fabric. With an emission wavelength of 439 nm and an excitation wavelength of 381 nm, NCDs showed a quantum yield (QY) of up to 24.03 %. Acetone gas was clearly able to quench NCDs' fluorescence resulting from the inner filter effect, demonstrating excellent sensitivity and selectivity. A readout limit of 10 ppb was achieved in an acetone aqueous solution at room temperature, and a linear relationship was found for acetone concentrations of 10–200 ppb.