摘要： Nitrogen-doped carbon quantum dots (NCQDs) were prepared from chitosan through a hydrothermal reaction. When ethanol precipitation was used as the puri?cation method, a high product yield of 85.3% was obtained. A strong blue ?uorescence emission with a high quantum yield (QY) of 6.6% was observed from the NCQD aqueous solution. Physical and chemical characteristics of the NCQDs were carefully investigated by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), X-ray di?raction (XRD), Fourier transform infrared spectra (FTIR), Raman spectra, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), and transient ?uorescence spectra. Experimental results showed that diameters of the NCQDs were in the range of 2?10 nm. The carbon quantum dots possess good water dispersibility and precipitation by ethanol. When used for metal ion detection, the detection limit of the NCQDs for Fe3+ was as low as 1.57 μM. This work proposed a facile method to synthesize NCQDs from chitosan with high yield and demonstrated that carbon quantum dots derived from chitosan were promising for ion detection.