Lanthanide doped luminescent nanoparticles (LnNPs) show promise as alternative luminescent organic labels (dyes, fluorescent proteins, gold nanoparticles or nanorods, carbon nanodots, quantum dots etc).
LnNPs offer [1] great photostability - no photobleaching no photoblinking, [2] narrowband absorption & emission at multiple emission color, [3] efficient anti-Stokes emission (Visible emission under NIR photoexcitation) in so called upconverting nanoparticles (UCNPs), [4] longliving luminescent labels, (5) efficient exited state absorption.
There are numerrous cases where LnNP and UCNPs outperformed other labels. Our motivation is to study the properties of LnNPs aiming to support applications in nano-bio-technology, bio-sensing and bio-imaging, nano-thermometry, nano-manometry.
