Nd3+ single doped YVO4 nanoparticles for sub-tissue heating and thermal sensing in the second biological window

The real controlled photothermal therapies demand designing multifunction systems capable of simultaneous heating and local thermal sensing. In this work, we report on neodymium doped yttrium vanadate nanoparticles acting as nanoheaters and nanothermometers at the same time under 808 nm single beam excitation. Heating is produced due to the nonradiative processes, whereas thermal sensing is obtained by luminescence intensity ratio between Stark sublevels lying in the second biological window. The influence of Nd3+ content on both heating and sensing abilities was studied. The potential application of YVO4:Nd3+ nanoparticles for deep tissue fluorescence bioimaging and controlled photothermal therapies is demonstrated. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.