Biomineralization of calcium carbonate under amino acid carbon dots and its application in bioimaging.

[Display omitted] • Inspired by biomineralization, for the first time, an ACDs-CO 2 -Ca(OH) 2 system to study the biomineralization process of CaCO 3 in the presence of ACDs was developed. • The effects of different conditions on the crystal form and morphology of CaCO 3 were studied in detail, and a possible biomineralization mechanism was proposed. • The spherical ACDs@CaCO 3 organic–inorganic hybrid fluorescent material with good luminescence ability was prepared. • The spherical ACDs@CaCO 3 have good biocompatibility, very low cytotoxicity, and can achieve cell imaging very well. Biomineralization is a common phenomenon in nature, and organisms can prepare functional materials with multi-level ordered structures through biomineralization. Herein, inspired by biomineralization, for the first time, we developed an amino acid quantum dots (ACDs)–CO 2 -Ca(OH) 2 system to study the biomineralization process of CaCO 3 in the presence of ACDs. The ACDs could not only control the morphology and crystal form of CaCO 3 but also could be doped into CaCO 3 during the formation of CaCO 3 to form ACDs@CaCO 3 organic–inorganic hybrid fluorescent materials which had excellent luminous ability. Meanwhile, the morphology and crystal form of CaCO 3 could also be controlled by controlling the CO 2 flow rate and rotation speed. After that, a possible biomineralization mechanism of CaCO 3 in the presence of ACDs was proposed. Finally, the synthetic spherical ACDs@CaCO 3 were applied to the field of biological imaging for the first time. Our work not only provides new bionic methods for the synthesis of multifunctional biomineralized materials and new insights for further understanding of biomineralization mechanism, but also the synthesized new biomineralization fluorescent materials have great application potential in the field of bioimaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]