Hydrogen bonding interactions guided supramolecular self-assembly has been widely studied, which played important roles in the field of nanotechnology and nanodevices. Herein, an effective intermolecular hydrogen bonding mediated heating-up synthesis of high-quality fluorescent carbon dots (CDs) is developed based on hydrogen-bonding between trimesic acid and urea. Upon optimizing the hydrogen-bonding interaction, high quality of CDs with high monodispersity and stability could be obtained. Besides, these CDs could be used for sensitive and specific detection of ferric ions. The novel strategy may pave a new way in molecular engineering for the fabrication of high quality of CDs. (C) 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.