The use of nanofibrils celulose of sugarcane bagasse as precursor in synthesizing carbon nanodots by hydrothermal method

Sugarcane bagasse is an organic waste which has been produced in industrial scale. This waste has big potential to be utilized into carbonaceous material, such as carbon dots throughout its carbon contents. However, to synthesize carbon nanodots, temperature and carbon content source have important aspects. Therefore, this study is conducted to synthesize this material, and to investigate the properties of carbon nanodots. Cellulose fibrils were isolated by steam explosion treated within alkaline condition, and the nano-sized material was obtained by homogenizing alpha-cellulose. While the carbon nanodots were synthesized by hydrothermal method involving acidic reagents for 4, 8, and 12 hours. Based on FTIR analysis, the patterns showed similar properties to cellulose regarding on functional groups of O-H, C=O, C-O-C, and amino whereas the amount of cellulose fibrils isolated accounted for almost 30 percent from the raw materials, which show potential value of sugarcane bagasse. Photoluminescence characteristics were performed to determine the carbon nanodots property under UV-Lights, and the results showed that each samples displayed different colours from green to blue. Therefore, carbon nanodots which were successfully synthesized from nanofibrils cellulose were affected by time. (paper)