Unprecedented, Verified Roadmap for Material-Dependent Field Enhancement of Lanthanide Doped Upconverters to be utilized in Biomedical Applications

A., Noha S.

doi:10.21608/iugrc.2021.245585

Unprecedented, Verified Roadmap for Material-Dependent Field Enhancement of Lanthanide Doped Upconverters to be utilized in Biomedical Applications

Document Type : Original Article

Author

Noha S. A.

The American University in Cairo, Egypt.

10.21608/iugrc.2021.245585

Abstract

Β-NaYF4:Yb3+, Er3+ was synthesized hydrothermally to yield 100 nm average sized nanoparticles, according to their TEM. The absorption peak was found by UV-VIS-NIR spectroscopy to be at 980 nm. Upon excitation with this wavelength, emission peaks in the UVC were observed, confirming the concept of 6-photon nonradiative energy transfer between these lanthanide ions. Then, a generic approach for the optimization of upconverting nanoparticles is proposed to enhance the field by several orders of magnitude, for the first time, using all biodegradable materials and without the use of any metals. The approach was then verified by synthesizing Β-NaGdF4:Yb3+, Er3+ and Β-NaGd,YF4:Yb3+, Er3+ to yield a field enhancement of 2x the visible band and 1.5x in the UVC band. All of the nanoparticles synthesized were confirmed to have an emission band in the UVC band and another band in the visible, allowing for both virus killing and imaging, respectively for biomedical applications.

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