Lanthanide-Doped KMgF3 Upconversion Nanoparticles for Photon Avalanche Luminescence with Giant Nonlinearities

Meiran Zhang; Ping Huang; Wei Zheng; Xiaorong Song; Xiaoying Shang; Wen Zhang; Dengfeng Yang; Xiaodong Yi; Xueyuan Chen

doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c02377

Lanthanide-Doped KMgF₃ Upconversion Nanoparticles for Photon Avalanche Luminescence with Giant Nonlinearities

Nano Lett. 2023 Sep 27;23(18):8576-8584. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c02377. Epub 2023 Sep 8.

Authors

Meiran Zhang^{1

2

3}, Ping Huang^{1

2

3}, Wei Zheng^{1

2

3}, Xiaorong Song⁴, Xiaoying Shang^{1

2}, Wen Zhang^{1

3}, Dengfeng Yang^{1

3

4}, Xiaodong Yi^{1

2}, Xueyuan Chen^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ CAS Key Laboratory of Design and Assembly of Functional Nanostructures, Fujian Key Laboratory of Nanomaterials, and State Key Laboratory of Structural Chemistry, Fujian Institute of Research on the Structure of Matter, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Fuzhou, Fujian 350002, China.
² Fujian Science & Technology Innovation Laboratory for Optoelectronic Information of China, Fuzhou, Fujian 350108, China.
³ University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
⁴ College of Chemistry, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou 350108, China.

PMID: 37683074
DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c02377

Abstract

Lanthanide (Ln³⁺)-doped photon avalanche (PA) upconversion nanoparticles (UCNPs) have great prospects in many advanced technologies; however, realizing efficient PA luminescence in Ln³⁺-doped UCNPs remains challenging due to the deleterious surface and lattice quenching effect. Herein, we report a unique strategy based on the pyrolysis of KHF₂ for the controlled synthesis of aliovalent Ln³⁺-doped KMgF₃ UCNPs, which can effectively protect Ln³⁺ from luminescence quenching by surface and internal OH^- defects and thereby boost upconversion luminescence. This enables us to realize efficient PA luminescence from Tm³⁺ at 802 nm in KMgF₃: Tm³⁺ UCNPs upon 1064 nm excitation, with a giant nonlinearity of ∼27, a PA response time of 281 ms, and an excitation threshold of 16.6 kW cm^-2. This work may open up a new avenue for exploring highly nonlinear PA luminescence through aliovalent Ln³⁺ doping and crystal lattice engineering toward diverse emerging applications.

Keywords: KMgF3; lanthanide; nonlinearity; photon avalanche; upconversion luminescence.