Selectively Manipulating Interactions between Lanthanide Sublattices in Nanostructure toward Orthogonal Upconversion

• Published in: Nano letters 2023-07, Vol.23 (13), p.6241-6248
• Main Authors: An, Zhengce, Li, Qiqing, Huang, Jinshu, Tao, Lili, Zhou, Bo
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 1530-6984; 1530-6992
• DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c00747

Smart control of ionic interactions is a key factor to manipulate the luminescence dynamics of lanthanides and tune their emission colors. However, it remains challenging to gain a deep insight into the physics involving the interactions between heavily doped lanthanide ions and in particular between the lanthanide sublattices for luminescent materials. Here we report a conceptual model to selectively manipulate the spatial interactions between erbium and ytterbium sublattices by designing a multilayer core–shell nanostructure. The interfacial cross-relaxation is found to be a leading process to quench the green emission of Er3+, and red-to-green color-switchable upconversion is realized by fine manipulation of the interfacial energy transfer on the nanoscale. Moreover, the temporal control of up-transition dynamics can also lead to an observation of green emission due to its fast rise time. Our results demonstrate a new strategy to achieve orthogonal upconversion, showing great promise in frontier photonic applications.