In recent years, waterborne epoxy resin (WE) has garnered attention due to its lower environmental pollution compared to solvent-based coatings. However, their poor barrier properties severely limit their practical applications. In order to enhance the corrosion resistance of water-based epoxy resin coating, a highly efficient strategy of combining the barrier effect of lamellar structured zirconium phosphate (α-ZrP) and the inhibitor effect of special carbon dots by the intercalation method was proposed in this work. A mixture of l-tyrosine and 3-amino-1,2,4-triazole-5-thiol as carbon sources led to carbon dot LCDs carrying many functional groups on the surface, such as -SH, -OH, -NH