Ultra-wideband-responsive photon conversion through co-sensitization in lanthanide nanocrystals

Distinctive upconversion or downshifting of lanthanide nanocrystals holds promise for biomedical and photonic applications. However, either process requires high-energy lasers at discrete wavelengths for excitation. Here we demonstrate that co-sensitization can break this limitation with ultrawide e...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2023-02, Vol.14 (1), p.827-827, Article 827
Main Authors: Jiang, Zhao, He, Liangrui, Yang, Zhiwen, Qiu, Huibin, Chen, Xiaoyuan, Yu, Xujiang, Li, Wanwan
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/624/399/354
639/925/357/354
Angiography
Core-shell structure
Crystals
Energy transfer
Erbium
Excitation
Fluorescence
Holmium
Humanities and Social Sciences
Infrared windows
Lasers
Light emitting diodes
Medical imaging
multidisciplinary
Nanocrystals
Photons
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Signal to noise ratio
Ultrawideband
Wavelengths
White light
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Summary:Distinctive upconversion or downshifting of lanthanide nanocrystals holds promise for biomedical and photonic applications. However, either process requires high-energy lasers at discrete wavelengths for excitation. Here we demonstrate that co-sensitization can break this limitation with ultrawide excitation bands. We achieve co-sensitization by employing Nd 3+ and Ho 3+ as the co-sensitizers with complementary absorptions from the ultraviolet to infrared region. Symmetric penta-layer core-shell nanostructure enables tunable fluorescence in the visible and the second near-infrared window when incorporating different activators (Er 3+ , Ho 3+ , Pr 3+ , and Tm 3+ ). Transient spectra confirm the directional energy transfer from sensitizers to activators through the bridge of Yb 3+ . We validate the features of the nanocrystals for low-powered white light-emitting diode-mediated whole-body angiography of mice with a signal-to-noise ratio of 12.3 and excitation-regulated encryption. This co-sensitization strategy paves a new way in lanthanide nanocrystals for multidirectional photon conversion manipulation and excitation-bandwidth-regulated fluorescence applications. The authors report a multi-ion co-sensitization strategy to achieve ultra-wideband-responsive photon conversion of lanthanide nanocrystals from UV to NIR. They demonstrate applications for white light-based bioimaging and information encryption.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-023-36510-3