Recently, Associate Professor Liu Min from the School of Materials Science and Engineering of SIT collaborated with Dr. Su Liangbi from the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and made progress in the ultrafast room-temperature synthesis and thermal enhancement of upconversion luminescence of fluorides. The research paper titled “Ultrafast Room-Temperature Synthesis of Yb3+/Er3+ codoped K3ZrF7 Nanocrystals for Thermal Enhancement of Upconversion” was published in Laser & Photonics Reviews, a prestigious journal in the field of optics (Materials Science 1-area Top journal, IF=9.8), with SIT as the first author institution, Dr. Fu Huhui as the first author, Liu Min, Su Liangbi, and Dr. Fu Huhui as co-corresponding authors.
Due to their potential applications in biological imaging, drug delivery, sensing, and coding, rare earth-doped upconversion luminescent nanocrystals have attracted widespread attention. Currently, the synthesis of rare earth upconversion nanomaterials typically requires strict synthesis conditions, such as high reaction temperatures, long reaction times, rigorous anhydrous and anoxic environments, and complicated post-processing procedures. These drawbacks have seriously hindered the industrialization of rare earth upconversion luminescent nanomaterials.
By co-precipitation method at room temperature, the cubic phase K3ZrF7:Yb/Er nanocrystals with good dispersion, regular morphology and uniform size can be obtained by 10s. Moreover, the upconversion luminescence performance of K3ZrF7:Yb/Er nanoparticles synthesized at high temperature and NaBiF4:Yb/Er nanoparticles synthesized at room temperature is superior to that of K3ZRF7: YB/ER nanoparticles synthesized at room temperature. These nanomaterials exhibit anomalous upconversion thermal enhancement in the range from room temperature to 473 K, which may be due to the F-vacancy caused by heterovalent doping.
Based on NTCLs-LIR technology, the researchers further investigated the temperature sensing performance of the sample, and its maximum absolute sensitivity (Sa) and relative sensitivity (Sr) reached 443.2% and 1.52% K-1, respectively, which is higher than almost all Yb/ ER-doped optical thermometry materials reported to date. This makes K3ZrF7:Yb/Er nanocrystals have potential applications in the field of high-precision nano-optical temperature sensing.
Source: School of Materials Science and Engineering
