Issue 14, 2017

Dye-sensitized lanthanide-doped upconversion nanoparticles

Abstract

Lanthanide-doped upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) are promising for applications as wide as biological imaging, multimodal imaging, photodynamic therapy, volumetric displays, and solar cells. Yet, the weak and narrow absorption of lanthanide ions poses a fundamental limit of UCNPs to withhold their brightness, creating a long-standing hurdle for the field. Dye-sensitized UCNPs are emerging to address this performance-limiting problem, yielding up to thousands-fold brighter luminescence than conventional UCNPs without dye sensitization. In their configuration, organic dyes with spectrally broad and intense absorption are anchored to the surface of UCNPs to harvest the excitation light energy, which is then transferred via Förster and/or Dexter mechanisms across the organic/inorganic interface to the lanthanides incorporated in UCNPs (with or devoid of a shell) to empower efficient upconversion. This tutorial review highlights recent progress in the development of dye sensitized UCNPs, with an emphasis on the theory of energy transfer, the geometric classification of the dye sensitized core and core/shell nanocrystals, and their emerging photonic and biophotonic applications. Opportunities and challenges offered by dye sensitized UCNPs are also discussed.

Graphical abstract: Dye-sensitized lanthanide-doped upconversion nanoparticles

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Tutorial Review
Submitted
24 Jan 2017
First published
16 Jun 2017

Chem. Soc. Rev., 2017,46, 4150-4167

Dye-sensitized lanthanide-doped upconversion nanoparticles

X. Wang, R. R. Valiev, T. Y. Ohulchanskyy, H. Ågren, C. Yang and G. Chen, Chem. Soc. Rev., 2017, 46, 4150 DOI: 10.1039/C7CS00053G

To request permission to reproduce material from this article, please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

If you are an author contributing to an RSC publication, you do not need to request permission provided correct acknowledgement is given.

If you are the author of this article, you do not need to request permission to reproduce figures and diagrams provided correct acknowledgement is given. If you want to reproduce the whole article in a third-party publication (excluding your thesis/dissertation for which permission is not required) please go to the Copyright Clearance Center request page.

Read more about how to correctly acknowledge RSC content.

Social activity

Spotlight

Advertisements