Mercury ions have been considered highly toxic to human health. What would be great is to develop the ionic probes without any toxicities themselves. Here, we report a friendly, highly sensitive mercury(II) ionic probe, watersoluble photoluminescence carbon dots which were synthesized by simply hydrothermal treatment of fresh cherry tomatoes without adding any other reagents. The ultra-small(1 nm) carbon dots show robust excitation-depended photoluminescence under a wide p H range(4–10) or a strong ionic strength of up to 1 M, and the detection limit of mercury(II) has been determined as low as 18 n M. We envision such water-soluble, biocompatible carbon dots that could be applied to biolabeling, bio-imaging, and biosensing fields.
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