Manganese-Doped Carbon Dots as a Promising Nanoprobe for Luminescent and Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Luminescent carbon nanodots (CDs) are a low-toxic nanomaterial with a tunable emission in a wide spectral range and with various functional groups on the surface. Therefore, CDs can prospectively serve as luminescent nanoprobes for biomedical applications, such as drug-delivery, visualization, sensing, etc. The doping of CDs with paramagnetic or transition metals allows the expansion of the range of applications of CDs and the fabrication of a multimodal nanoprobe for bioimaging. Here, we developed CDs doped with manganese (Mn) based on commonly used precursors—o-phenylenediamine or citric acid and formamide. The chemical structure, morphology, optical properties, and magnetic resonance responses have been carefully studied. The obtained CDs are up to 10 nm, with emissions observed in the 400–650 nm spectral region. CDs exhibit an ability to reduce both T1 and T2 relaxation times by up to 6.4% and 42.3%, respectively. The high relaxivity values suggest the use of CDs as promising dual-mode contrast agents for T1 and T2 MRI. Therefore, our developed CDs can be utilized as a new multifunctional nanoscale probe for photoluminescent and magnetic resonance bioimaging.