Carbon Dots in Porous Materials: Host-Guest Synergy for Enhanced Performance.

Carbon dots (CDs) are emerging as a new class of carbon nanomaterials, which have inspired growing interest for their widespread applications in anti-counterfeiting, sensing, bioimaging, optoelectronic and energy-related fields . In terms of the concept of host-guest assembly, i mmobilizing CDs into porous materials (PMs) ha s proven to be an eff ective strategy to avoid the ag gregation of bare CDs in solid state, in particular, the host-guest synergy with both merits of CDs and PMs afford composites promising properties in afterglow and tunable emissions, as well as optimize their performance in optics, catalysis, and energy storage. This minireview summarizes the recent progress in the research of CDs@PM s, and highlights synthetic strategies of constructing composites and roles of porous matrices in boosting the applications of CDs in diverse areas. T he prospect of future exploration and challenges are proposed for design ing advanced CDs-based functional nano composite materials.