Photon Avalanching Upconversion Luminescence Generated from Lanthanide Doped Upconversion Nanoparticles

Thanh-Thu Vu Le^1*, Jiunn-Yuan Lin¹, Hung-Chih Kan¹, Chia-Chen Hsu¹

¹Department of Physics and Center for Nano Bio-Detection, National Chung Cheng University, Ming-Hsiung, Chia-Yi 621, Taiwan

* Presenter:Thanh-Thu Vu Le, email:levuthanhthu@gmail.com

Recently, photon avalanching upconversion luminescence (UCL) generated from lanthanide doped up-conversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) have attracted considerable interest. Herein, we report the photon avalanching UCL properties of β-phase nanocrystal Tm3+-doped NaYF4 core-shell (NaYF4:Tm3+@NaYF4) UCNPs synthesized by the thermal decomposition method. UCL emission of the UCNPs at the wavelength of 800 nm can be generated by the excitation of a low power continuous wave laser at the wavelength of 1064 nm. Furthermore, we demonstrate the occurrence of photon avalanching UCL of the UCNPs (n >21) with a very low-threshold of excitation intensity which is lower than 6 kWcm-2. The excitation intensity threshold of the photon avalanching UCL can be reduced by using a core-shell architecture and the increase of shell thickness. The photon avalanching UNCPs will be used for the studies of super-resolution fluorescence microscopy in the next stage.

Keywords: Photo avalanche, unconversion nanoparticle, photoluminescence