Independent hydrothermal synthesis of the undoped, nitrogen, boron and sulphur doped biogenic carbon nanodots and their potential application in the catalytic chemo-reduction of Alizarine yellow R azo dye

This research study highlights the catalytic usage of hetero atoms doped and undoped biogenic carbon nano dots (BCNDs) in the reduction of Alizarine yellow R (AYR) dye. Hydrothermal route was followed to synthesize the eco-friendly and fluorescent undoped as well as, N, B & S doped BCNDs from Syzygium cumini (S. cumini) fruit extract. Synthesized BCNDs exhibited good fluorescent and optical properties. From the HR-TEM results, the sizes of the spherically shaped undoped, N, B & S doped BCNDs were found to be 4.75 nm, 4.31 nm, 4.07 nm & 3.96 nm respectively. XRD results highlighted their amorphous nature. Functional groups and elemental percentages were elucidated from the results of FT-IR, EDS and XPS. Graphitic texture of the BCNDs were explained from Raman spectroscopy results and SAED. Thermal stability of BCNDs was evident from the results of TGA analysis. Further, BCNDs were used as green catalyst in the reduction of Alizarine Yellow R (AYR) dye. Langmuir- Hinshelwood mechanism was applied to evaluate the catalytic influence of BCNDs on AYR dye.