Abstract
A novel strategy is proposed to directly synthesize water-soluble hexagonal NaYF4 nanorods by doping rare-earth ions with large ionic radius (such as La3+, Ce3+, Pr3+, Nd3+, Sm3+, Eu3+, and Gd3+), and the dopantcontrolled growth mechanism is studied. Based on the doping effect, we fabricated water-soluble hexagonal NaYF4:(Yb,Er)/La and NaYF4:(Yb,Er)/Ce nanorods, which exhibited much brighter upconversion fluorescence than the corresponding cubic forms. The sizes of the nanorods can be adjusted over a broad range by changing the dopant concentration and reaction time. Furthermore, we successfully demonstrated a novel depth-sensitive multicolor bioimaging for in vivo use by employing the as-synthesized NaYF4:(Yb,Er)/La nanorods as probes.
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Yu, X., Li, M., Xie, M. et al. Dopant-controlled synthesis of water-soluble hexagonal NaYF4 nanorods with efficient upconversion fluorescence for multicolor bioimaging. Nano Res. 3, 51–60 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-010-1008-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-010-1008-2