Tailoring the Chemical Structure of Nitrogen‐Doped Carbon Dots for Nano‐Aminocatalysis in Aqueous Media

Abstract

Abstract Amine‐rich carbon dots (NCDs) have become promising nano‐aminocatalytic platforms in organic synthesis. These nanomaterials can be effectively produced through straightforward bottom‐up approaches using inexpensive nitrogen‐containing molecular precursors as a starting material. However, to date, there is still a limited understanding of how the molecular features of these precursors affect the catalytic activity of the resulting nanoparticles. This study concerns the production of a new family of NCDs, which use l ‐arginine and different alkyl diamines as starting materials. The surface amines of all these NCDs were comprehensively characterized, thus allowing us to provide a correlation between the structural features of the nanoparticles and their catalytic performance with a selected amino‐catalyzed organic transformation. Importantly, the most active nano‐aminocatalysts, namely, NCDs‐ 3 , were then used as a basis for the formation of a wide variety of functionalized organic compounds in water under mild reaction conditions.