Pickering emulsions have attracted considerable interest due to their potential applications in many fields, such as the food, pharmaceutical, petroleum and cosmetics industries. The study reports the synthesis of dodecylamine-functionalized graphene quantum dots (D-GQDs) and their implementation as stabilizers in an emulsion polymerization of styrene. First, D-GQDs are prepared by thermal pyrolysis of citric acid and dodecylamine in 0.1 M ammonium hydroxide. The resulting D-GQDs consist of small graphene sheets with abundant amino, carboxyl, acylamino, hydroxyl and alkyl chains on the edge. The amphiphilic structure gives the D-GQDs high surface activity. The addition of D-GQDs can reduce the surface tension of water to 30.8 mN m(-1) and the interfacial tension of paraffin oil/water to 0.0182 mN m(-1). The surface activity is much better than that of previously reported solid particle surfactants for Pickering emulsions and is close to that of sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate, which is, a classical organic surfactants. Then, D-GQDS are employed as solid particle surfactants for stabilizing styrene-in-water emulsions. The emulsions exhibit excellent stability at pH 7. However, stability is lost when the pH is more than 9 or less than 4. The pH-switchable behaviour can be attributed to the protonation of amino groups in a weak acid medium and dissociation of carboxyl groups in a weak base medium. Finally, 2,2'-azobis(2-methylpropionitrile) is introduced into the Pickering emulsions to trigger emulsion polymerization of styrene. The as-prepared polystyrene spheres display a uniform morphology with a narrow diameter distribution. The fluorescent D-GQDs coated their surfaces. This study presents an approach for the fabrication of amphiphilic GQDs and GQDs-based functional materials, which have a wide range of potential applications in emulsion polymerization, as well as in sensors, catalysts, and energy storage. (C) 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.