The synthesis of catalytic-upconversion nanoparticles and their teragnostic applications

After realizing the wide applicability of upconversion nanoparticles from biomedical fields to environmental remediations through photocatalysis and solar energy harvesting there has been increasing interest to development of synthesis routes and design in band gap engineering for high efficient upconversion nanoparticles. In this study, the synthesis of upconversion nanoparticles having photocatalytic property is introduced and its applicability in cancer treatment is discussed due to generation of oxidative stress on MCF-7 cancer cell lines. In order to observe upconversion luminescence and extended luminescence life time wide-band-gap Ga2O3 was selected as a host material due to its optical property and high photocatalytic activity and Nd3+ and Yb3+ ions and their different concentrations were doped into host crystal structure with systematic studies. Particle size analyses, morphological features, crystalline structure and optical quality of synthesized nanocrystals ∼20 nm were conducted at Transmission Electron Microscopy, X-Ray Diffraction spectroscopy and Photoluminescence spectroscopy. Copyright © 2013 MS&T'13®.