Issue 38, 2023

Opposite luminescence thermal behavior of upconversion core/shell nanocrystals for anticounterfeiting

Abstract

Inorganic luminescent materials generally suffer from thermal quenching due to accelerated nonradiative transitions at high temperature, whereas Yb3+ sensitized core nanocrystals with small sizes (<30 nm) exhibit a temperature-dependent upconversion luminescence (UCL) enhancement. The related mechanism of the anomalous UCL thermal behavior is still under debate. In this work, we find that the UCL of NaGdF4:Yb/Tm@NaGdF4 inert-shell nanocrystals declines at elevated temperature, while that of NaGdF4:Yb/Ho@NaGdF4:Yb active-shell ones is enhanced. The thermally-induced UCL enhancement of active-shell nanocrystals is attributed to a gradually attenuated surface quenching effect. The initiators of the surface quenching are H2O molecules, which mainly attenuate Yb3+ excited states through an overtone energy transfer. The energy transfer is a coupling effect between ion dipoles of Yb3+ and atomic dipoles of H2O. Utilizing the opposite UCL temperature-dependence of active- and inert-shell nanocrystals, we designed their hybrids, which exhibit temperature-responsive multicolor emissions. The color-tunable hybrids are demonstrated to be excellent candidates for producing anticounterfeiting patterns with high security but simple recognition methods.

Graphical abstract: Opposite luminescence thermal behavior of upconversion core/shell nanocrystals for anticounterfeiting

Supplementary files

Article information

Article type
Communication
Submitted
26 Jul 2023
Accepted
09 Sep 2023
First published
11 Sep 2023

Nanoscale, 2023,15, 15552-15557

Opposite luminescence thermal behavior of upconversion core/shell nanocrystals for anticounterfeiting

Y. Hu, S. Yu, X. Deng, J. Zhou, R. Zhang and Q. Shao, Nanoscale, 2023, 15, 15552 DOI: 10.1039/D3NR03660J

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