Ultrafast turbulence-induced disintegration of BN and WS₂ quantum dots for potential multifunctional nanotheranostics

To facilitate progression from the laboratory to commercial applications, it will be necessary to develop facile and scalable methods to produce high-quality quantum dots (QDs) of layered two-dimensional materials (LTMs). In this paper, we for the first time report a turbulence-induced disintegration method to prepare ultra-small BN and WS₂ QDs, which can easily be achieved only using a household kitchen blender to directly disintegrate their bulk counterparts in liquids. The resulting ultra-small BN and WS₂ QDs exhibit excellent photoluminescence and photo-thermal converting properties, respectively. As proof-of-concept applications, these properties have great promise in cell-imaging probes and photo-thermal therapy. This work not only provides successful paradigms for preparing the QDs of other LTMs but also demonstrates potential applications for the QDs.