Carbon dots in separation science

The chapter describes the property of carbon-based nanomaterials, and carbon dots (CDs) used to separate the chemical substances from biological, clinical, pharmaceutical, environmental, and food samples. The properties like the size and surface area of CDs are important factors employed in separating and preconcentration of target analytes. The CDs have been used in high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), reverse-phase HPLC (RP-HPLC), capillary electrophoresis, solid-phase extraction (SPE), dispersive SPE (DSPE), magnetic SPE, and magnetic DSPE (MDSPE)-based separation of several chemical substances. The advantages of CDs as an adsorbent are to reduce the separation time, simplification of procedure with low sample requirement, and to reduce the use of toxic solvent consumption. In addition, CDs are combined with analytical techniques for analyzing metal ions, pesticides, organic and inorganic compounds with a better detection and recovery percentage limit.