Carbon nano-dots as a fluorescent and colorimetric dual-readout probe for the detection of arginine and Cu ²⁺ and its logic gate operation

over other analytes with a low detection limit of 0.26 μM and 0.17 μM, respectively. Meanwhile, the CNDs can also give dual responsive signals of a visible color change (yellow-pink-light yellow). According to this phenomenon, an "AND" logic gate based on the novel CNDs has been constructed. More importantly, the probe was also extended to cellular imaging. The proposed method was simple with ease of operation, which demonstrated great potential in bio-sensing, disease diagnosis or environmental monitoring.