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arXiv · 2403.09253

Broadband NIR photon upconversion generates NIR persistent luminescence for bioimaging

Shuting Yang·Bing Qi·Mingzi Sun·Wenjing Dai·Ziyun Miao·Wei Zheng·Bolong Huang·Jie Wang
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Abstract

Upconversion persistent luminescence (UCPL) phosphors that can be directly charged by near-infrared (NIR) light have gained considerable attention due to their promising applications ranging from photonics to biomedicine. However, current lanthanide-based UCPL phosphors show small absorption cross-sections and low upconversion charging efficiency. The development of UCPL phosphors faces challenges of lacking flexible upconversion charging pathways and poor design flexibility. Herein, we discovered a new lattice defect-mediated broadband photon upconversion process and the accompanied NIR-to-NIR UCPL in Cr-doped zinc gallate nanoparticles. The zinc gallate nanoparticles can be directly activated by broadband NIR light in the 700-1000 nm range to produce persistent luminescence at about 700 nm, which is also readily enhanced by rationally tailoring the lattice defects in the phosphors. This proposed UCPL phosphors achieved a signal-to-background ratio of over 200 in bioimaging by efficiently avoiding interference from autofluorescence and light scattering. Our findings reported the lattice defect-mediated photon upconversion for the first time, which significantly expanded the horizons for the flexible design of NIR-to-NIR UCPL phosphors toward broad applications.

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Shuting Yang, Bing Qi, Mingzi Sun, Wenjing Dai, Ziyun Miao, Wei Zheng, Bolong Huang, Jie Wang. 2024-03-14. Broadband NIR photon upconversion generates NIR persistent luminescence for bioimaging. https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.09253

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