Controlling the non-linear emission of upconversion nanoparticles to enhance super-resolution imaging performance

Simone De Camillis, Peng Ren, Yueying Cao, Martin Plöschner, Denitza Denkova, Xianlin Zheng, Yiqing Lu, James A. Piper

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

28 Citations (Scopus)
50 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) exhibit unique optical properties such as photo-emission stability, large anti-Stokes shift, and long excited-state lifetimes, allowing significant advances in a broad range of applications from biomedical sensing to super-resolution microscopy. In recent years, progress on nanoparticle synthesis led to the development of many strategies for enhancing their upconversion luminescence, focused in particular on heavy doping of lanthanide ions and core–shell structures. In this article, we investigate the non-linear emission properties of fully Yb-based core–shell UCNPs and their impact on the super-resolution performance of stimulated excitation-depletion (STED) microscopy and super-linear excitation-emission (uSEE) microscopy. Controlling the power-dependent emission curve enables us to relax constraints on the doping concentrations and to reduce the excitation power required for accessing sub-diffraction regimes. We take advantage of this feature to implement multiplexed super-resolution imaging of a two-sample mixture.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)20347-20355
Number of pages9
JournalNanoscale
Volume12
Issue number39
Early online date28 Sept 2020
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 21 Oct 2020

Bibliographical note

Copyright © The Royal Society of Chemistry 2020. Version archived for private and non-commercial use with the permission of the author/s and according to publisher conditions. For further rights please contact the publisher.

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