Electrophoretic extraction of highly monodispersed graphene quantum dots from widely polydispersed bulk and its cytotoxicity effect against cancer cells

• Published in: Microchemical journal 2020-12, Vol.159, p.105391, Article 105391
• Main Authors: Davardoostmanesh, Maryam, Ahmadzadeh, Hossein, Goharshadi, Elaheh K., Meshkini, Azadeh, Sistanipour, Elnaz
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Cancer therapy; Electrophoretic size fractionation; Graphene quantum dots; Photoluminescence; Saos-2 cell lines
• ISSN: 0026-265X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.microc.2020.105391

Thermal pyrolysis of citric acid (CA) was performed at high temperature. The electrophoretic size fractionation of bulk carbonaceous nanomaterials was carreid out in continuation of the CA pyrolysis. The smalest collected fraction was GQDs. The cytotoxicity assesments demonstrated that the GQDs have higher toxicity against bone cancer cells than bulk. SEM microscopy images showed that the morphological changes in GQDs-treated cells are greater than bulk-treated cells. [Display omitted] •The GQDs was prepared by pyrolysis of CA, and then fractionated by electrophoretic.•The GQDs was separated into several monodispersed fractions in very short time by applying low electric field.•GQDs have higher toxicity against Saos-2 cancer cells compared with bulk. In this work, we used a rapid (less than 10 s), inexpensive, and efficient method for exteraction of graphene quantum dots, GQDs, after thermal pyrolysis preparation from citric acid. The electrophoretic size fractionation was performed following the citric acid pyrolysis without using dialysis membrane. The last separated fraction was GQDs with a narrow size distribution and average size of ~60 nm. The characterization techniques showed that the GQDs exhibit strong photoluminescence properties which are highly desired for several applications in various fields such as cancer therapy. The cytotoxicity assesments demonstrated that the GQDs have higher toxicity (IC50 of 31.08 ± 2.71 µg/mL after 24 h) against human bone carcinoma cell line, Saos-2, compared to the bulk (IC50 of 65.06 ± 5.41 µg/mL after 24 h).