Plasmonic Dual-Enhancement and Precise Color Tuning of Gold Nanorod@SiO2Coupled Core–Shell–Shell Upconversion Nanocrystals

Fengwen Kang, Jijun He, Tianying Sun, Zhi Yong Bao, Feng Wang, Dangyuan Lei

Research output: Journal article publicationJournal articleAcademic researchpeer-review

138 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

KGaA, Weinheim The last decade has witnessed the remarkable research progress of lanthanide-doped upconversion nanocrystals (UCNCs) at the forefront of promising applications. However, the future development and application of UCNCs are constrained greatly by their underlying shortcomings such as significant nonradiative processes, low quantum efficiency, and single emission colors. Here a hybrid plasmonic upconversion nanostructure consisting of a GNR@SiO2coupled with NaGdF4:Yb3+,Nd3+@NaGdF4:Yb3+,Er3+@NaGdF4core–shell–shell UCNCs is rationally designed and fabricated, which exhibits strongly enhanced UC fluorescence (up to 20 folds) and flexibly tunable UC colors. The experimental findings show that controlling the SiO2spacer thickness enables readily manipulating the intensity ratio of the Er3+red, green, and blue emissions, thereby allowing us to achieve the emission color tuning from pale yellow to green upon excitation at 808 nm. Electrodynamic simulations reveal that the tunable UC colors are due to the interplay of plasmon-mediated simultaneous excitation and emission enhancements in the Er3+green emission yet only excitation enhancement in the blue and red emissions. The results not only provide an upfront experimental design for constructing hybrid plasmonic UC nanostructures with high efficiency and color tunability, but also deepen the understanding of the interaction mechanism between the Er3+emissions and plasmon resonances in such complex hybrid nanostructure.
Original languageEnglish
Article number1701842
JournalAdvanced Functional Materials
Volume27
Issue number36
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 26 Sept 2017

Keywords

  • color tuning
  • electrodynamic simulations
  • gold nanorods
  • plasmonic dual-enhancement
  • upconversion nanocrystals

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
  • Biomaterials
  • Condensed Matter Physics
  • Electrochemistry

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