Application of biomass carbon dots in food packaging

Since its discovery, carbon quantum dots (CDs) have been widely applied in cell imaging, drug delivery, biosensing, and photocatalysis due to their excellent water solubility, chemical stability, fluorescence stability biocompatibility, low toxicity, and preparation cost. However, the low fluorescence yield and poor surface structure limit the application of CDs. Heteroatom doping is considered an ideal method to improve CDs’ optical and electrical properties. From this perspective, eco-friendly biomass and its derivatives are perfect carbon precursors for CDs because they contain the heteroatoms needed to modify CDs, and their complex chemical composition gives CDs a wide variety of surface functional groups. Besides, converting biomass waste into high-value-added CDs is also an innovation in biomass waste treatment. Therefore, this paper focuses on the carbon precursors of biomass CDs. At the same time, food packaging occupies an essential position in the industry, and fluorescent CDs with good fluorescence properties, high chemical stability, and good photobleaching properties have great application potential in packaging innovation techniques that have emerged in recent years, but relevant reports are scarce and scattered. Considering that the surface morphology, chemical structure, and optical and electrical properties of biomass CDs are primarily affected by the carbon precursors’ chemical structure and preparation method, this paper also focuses on the synthesis method of biomass CDs and its application in anti-counterfeiting packaging, intelligent packaging, antioxidant packaging, and antibacterial packaging. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2025.