ABSTRACT The environmental pollution caused by non‐degradable polymer is becoming more and more serious. Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), biodegradable, non‐toxic, is a good substitute. However, pure PVA has single function, low mechanical strength, poor thermal stability and poor water resistance, which limits its wide application range. Carbon dots (CDs) as a new member of the carbon family has many outstanding advantages such as non‐toxic, low‐cost and becomes an important modifying substance for PVA. CDs/PVA composites show some new properties, such as shape memory, electrochemical properties, optical properties, antibacterial, ultraviolet blocking, which greatly expands its application fields. This review focuses on some novel applications of CDs/PVA. For instance, the ability to form reversible dynamic bonds make CDs/PVA suitable for shape memory and self‐healing materials. The excellent luminescent characteristics and high photoluminescence quantum yield of CDs confer optical properties to CDs/PVA, enabling new applications in optoelectronics and sensing fields. Due to its water resistance, antibacterial properties, antioxidant capacity, and UV resistance, CDs/PVA can serve as a new functional packaging material. Other applications include as adsorbent in environmental protection, anti‐counterfeiting materials, fingerprint identification, electromagnetic shielding materials, catalysis, energy storage, and more. Some bottleneck and challenging issues are also discussed to provide guidance for future research.
Gong et al. (Sun,) studied this question.