Significant Enhancement of the Upconversion Emission in Highly Er3+-Doped Nanoparticles at Cryogenic Temperatures

Relatively low efficiency is the bottleneck for the application of lanthanide-doped upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs). The high-level doping strategy realized in recent years has not improved the efficiency as much as expected. It is argued that cross relaxation (CR) is not detrimental to upconversion. Here we combine theoretical simulation and spectroscopy to elucidate the role of CR in upconversion process of Er3+ highly doped (HD) UCNPs. It is found that if CR is purposively suppressed, upconversion efficiency can be significantly improved. Specifically, we demonstrate experimentally that inhibition of CR by introducing cryogenic environment (40 K) enhances upconversion emission by more than two orders of magnitude. This work not only elucidates the nature of CR and its non-negligible adverse effects, but also provides a new perspective for improving upconversion efficiency. The result can be directly applied to cryogenic imaging and wide range temperature sensing.

Automated summary

Relatively low efficiency is the bottleneck for the application of lanthanide-doped upconversion nanoparticles. The high-level doping strategy realized in recent years has not improved the efficiency as much as expected. This study combines theoretical simulation and spectroscopy to elucidate the role of cross relaxation (CR) in the upconversion process and demonstrates that inhibiting CR significantly improves upconversion efficiency.