Thermally prolonged luminescence lifetime by energy migration engineering for optical temperature sensing.

Authors

Wei Xu, Mingjing Xiang, Chunhai Hu, Peng Wang, Zhen Sun

Published in

Optics letters. Volume 51. Issue 17. Pages 4801-4804. Sep 01, 2026.

Abstract

Because of the high robustness, superior spatial resolution, and rapid thermal response, luminescence lifetime-based nanothermometry has presented great potential applications in biomedicine. However, conventional luminescence lifetime thermometry is implemented by thermally activated quenching processes, which deteriorate both emission intensity and lifetime at elevated temperatures, thereby compromising the signal quality and the measurement accuracy. In this work, we propose an alternative thermometric strategy based on engineered energy transfer. Using NaYF₄: Nd³⁺ @NaYF₄: Yb³⁺ core@shell nanoparticles as the sensing medium, a phonon-assisted interfacial energy transfer pathway from Yb³⁺ to Nd³⁺ is established, which competes with surface quenching to trap the migrated excitation energy of Yb³⁺ within the shell, leading to an abnormal thermal response in luminescence. Under 980 nm laser excitation, the luminescence of Yb³⁺ exhibits a simultaneous enhancement in lifetime and intensity with the increase of temperature. A relative thermal sensitivity of about 0.5% K^-1 is achieved based on Yb³⁺ luminescence lifetime over the range of 303-353 K. This mechanism circumvents the intrinsic limitation in lifetime-based thermal sensing, paving a new, to the best of our knowledge, way for luminescence thermometry.

PMID:
42679250
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 02 Sep 2026.

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