The invention belongs to the technical field of applications of fluorescence carbon nano-materials, and concretely relates to a preparation method of carbon quantum dots, and a method for detecting dichromate ions by using the carbon quantum dots. The green preparation of the carbon quantum dots is carried out by using cheap and easily available phosphoric acid or water-soluble phosphate and organic amine as raw materials without a surface passivating agent or other additives in order to prepare the N,P-doped carbon quantum dots having a good water solubility, the carbon quantum dots have uniformly distributed particle sizes, and the average diameter of carbon quantum dot particles is not more than 5 nm. The preparation method has the advantages of cheap raw materials, simplicity and fastness, the selective detection of Cr<2>O<7><2-> is realized by the quantum dots, the detection limit of the quantum dots to Cr<2>O<7><2-> is low, the lowest detection limit can reach 1.2 [mu]M, and highly sensitive detection is achieved. The detection method is not affected by most interference ions (such as Cu<2+>, K<+>, Na<+>, Ca<2+>, Mg<2+>, Co<2+>, Ni<2+>, Ba<2+>, Pb<2+>, Fe<2+>, Zn<2+>, Al<3+>and Fe<3+>, and has a great application prospect.